


Three Little Words

by acaelousqueadcentrum



Category: Rookie Blue
Genre: F/F, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-11
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-04-08 20:00:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 28,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4317975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acaelousqueadcentrum/pseuds/acaelousqueadcentrum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>100 Ways to Say I Love You</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pull Over, Let Me Drive for Awhile

The drive from Toronto to San Francisco is long, and there are times when Gail regrets offering to help Holly drive from side of the continent to the other. 

If she said it aloud, Gail knows, Holly would make some comment about how the drive from Toronto to San Francisco didn’t count as a whole continent, more like eighty percent. Because Holly would know that, just off the top of her head. She always knows weird, random little facts about things. 

Like their first date at the batting cages, when the brunette spent most of their dinner afterward talking about the origins of baseball, and how even though it was considered a quintessential American past-time (to the Americans, at least), its roots really stretched back into England and Europe, possibly as far back as Middle Ages. Gail couldn’t have cared less, of course, but she’d listened carefully, fascinated by the way Holly’s mouth quirked up into a smile and how her words sped up the more she got into the topic. 

It was adorable, and though she didn’t know it then, when Gail looks back, she thinks that might have been the very moment she officially started falling in love with the doctor. Watching her wax poetical about the difference between la balle empoisonnée and modern baseball, waving a french fry around in the air, completely oblivious to the little drop of mustard smudged along the corner of her lower lip.

* * *

She’d done a lot of thinking over the past few weeks and months. A lot of self-reflection. Between the break-up and her attempt to get Holly back, the revelations in the locker room, and the first few weeks without the woman who was stitched into every part of her body, and heart, and soul. 

And she’d come to one final conclusion. 

She can’t let Holly go. 

She can’t let Holly go without making sure the other woman knew that there was something–someone–to come back for. 

So she’d offered to help when Holly mentioned needing to come back and drive the last of her things to her new home, offered to share the road, keep Holly company and help get everything settled in that tiny new apartment on the eleventh floor with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge off, off, off in the distance. 

Somehow, Gail’d promised herself, she’d find a way. Find a way to tell Holly she loved her, loved her more than anything. That if the brunette was willing to give her a second chance, have a little faith, Gail was ready to take the leap. 

That if Holly couldn’t stay, Gail was willing to go.

* * *

It’s day three of their four-day drive and every mile marker they pass is just a reminder that time is running out. That her chances are growing smaller and smaller by the second. 

But every time Gail opens her mouth to say the words, to confess her heart, something else comes out. A joke about American drivers or a demand to change the radio station to something less nauseatingly twangy. A whining plea about needing to stop for snacks, or shame-filled acknowledgement that Holly had been right, that she definitely had not needed to eat three of those chili dogs from the last gas station they’d stopped at for a pee-break and a fill-up. 

But not the words she needs to say the most. Never the words she needs Holly to hear.

* * *

The road is empty before them as they travel through the dry landscape of western Utah, and Gail feels the burn kindle in her chest, the ache of holding back, of fear, spreading through her lungs. 

Holly’s driving, eyes always on the road ahead, and she’s tapping her fingers on the steering wheel to the beat of whatever’s on the radio, some song Gail doesn’t recognize but that’s pleasant enough for the moment. 

And with the sun reflecting off her hair, the sunglasses perched on the tip of her nose, she’s easily the most beautiful thing Gail has ever seen. And the need building inside of her is threatening to break free, threatening to spill over, off her tongue, into the sun-gold light of the late afternoon. 

“Holly,” Gail says, and her voice cracks as she digs her fingers into her denim-covered legs.

“Yeah,” the brunette answers without looking over, without taking her eyes off the road.”

But this isn’t the moment. This isn’t the time. Not now in the car with the day behind them and the night before them and another long drive tomorrow. Not with the memory of Holly’s tears when they broke up contrasting so sharply with now, the smile Gail can see from the corner of her eyes. 

No, not now.

“Why don’t we switch,” she says, “I’ll drive for a while.” 

And another chance is gone. 

Not gone, wasted. Discarded. 

And there’s a part of Gail, small and afraid, that hates herself, that hates how she can’t seem to work up the courage to follow the road her heart has mapped out for her. 

But when they switch, when Holly brushes against her hand as they cross in front of the car, Gail smiles.

They’ve got miles to go yet. 

Maybe the next one.


	2. It Reminded Me of You

Your hands are sweating as you climb the last step to her door, sweating and trembling and you’re not certain that you won’t end up dropping the very thing you came here to deliver before you have to say goodbye.

You’re seventeen and you’ve never felt like this before, alive. Complete. Certain that the world and all its wonders hold something for you too.

_It’s silly_ , you think, digging the tip of your toe into the rough mat that greets you on her stoop, _the whole idea is silly_. And you’re just a second away from turning to walk back home, to finish packing, to pretend this never happened, that you never almost made the biggest mistake of your life.

But then she door opens and there she is, sun-blonde hair and cut-offs, sneakers that match your own because you bought them together one rainy Saturday afternoon when the two of you had nothing better to do than wander the mall sharing a pretzel and shop. There she is and you feel your chest do that funny little doo-wop it’s been doing every time you see her lately. The little flutter and hello.

“Hey, there, loser,” she says with a wide grin, grape popsicle tucked into the corner of her mouth, and you know what her lips will be stained purple for the rest of the day, “whatcha got?”

Butterflies is too gentle a term for the feeling in your stomach, the way it’s twisting and turning, cramping with nerves. The way all your emotions, fear and worry and love, maybe love, are burning you up from the inside out. Lions, maybe, or elephants. Trampling around in your belly as you hold out the plain brown paper bag with the light lilac ribbon.

“I–,” you start, feeling the blush grow up, up, up from your chest to your neck, to your cheeks. “I got you something, a going-away gift.”

She takes it with an odd look in her eyes, like she’s not quite sure what’s going on, and flops down on the top step, pulling you down to sit next to her.

“You know,” she says, and her eyes are the bluest thing you’ve ever seen, the color of the sky on its very first day, a hue made only for the most precious of things, “you’re the one who’s going away. I’m supposed to get you something.”

And when she looks at you, there’s a curiosity there, peeking out from her dark pupils, like she’s trying, trying to see through you, to figure you out.

She’s the only person who’s ever come close.

The brown paper crinkles as she opens it, and you can’t watch. Can’t dare to see the expression there.

_It is silly_ , you think again, certain now. She won’t understand, she’ll think you’re weird.

You don’t have the words to explain it to her, why this caught your eye, why you knew, the very moment you saw it, that you needed to give it to her.

Maybe you don’t even know yourself.

But it seemed right.

It felt right.

The tension between sweet and sharp, the delicate flowers, the way the shopkeeper warned you of how once it started growing, it didn’t stop, not until there was no room for anything else. Invasive, he called it.

_Gail_ , you thought,  _like Gail_. How she slipped into your heart so simply, so easily, that you were long past gone before you ever even realized she was there.

“Is it–?” she starts to ask, and before you can stop yourself you interrupt.

“It’s spearmint. You can use the leaves in cooking or in tea or in a bunch of different things. And when it flowers, it has these little pink-purple bells, and it smells pretty, but also serious, you know?”

She sniffs gently at the plant in her hands, and a little of that ache, that worry, in your chest eases.

“It’s pretty,” she tells you, sniffing again with a smile.

“It reminded me of you, this little contradiction of beauty and strength,” you answer, almost a whisper, and maybe it’s the most honest you’ve ever been. With her. With anyone.

She looks at you for a moment, searching your face, pot cradled carefully in her hands.

And then, her lips are against yours, and you taste purple and you smell mint and you begin to think that maybe this isn’t the end of anything at all.

Maybe it’s only just beginning.

 


	3. No, No, It's My Treat

Their first date isn’t supposed to be a date at all, just two co-workers catching a concert when someone’s original date falls through.

When Holly asked, Gail’d been surprised. It’s not like she knew the pathologist very well, after all. Just a couple of polite encounters at the scene of a crime or passing in the halls at the morgue.  And there was that one time they ended up sitting next to each other at the Penny’s bar after a rough day, trading war stories and throwing back tequilas like pros.

But they were friendly enough together, if not actually friends, and there was something about the smart, funny doctor that Gail liked. Some kindred spirit they shared, maybe, or just a similar-enough sense of humor and jobs that were hard to talk to other people–non-law enforcement people–about.

So when Holly sees her in the hall heading back to her squad to clock out and change at the Fifteen, when she calls Gail’s name and jogs over to catch up to the waiting police officer, nothing strikes the blonde as strange. Nothing shouts “this is the beginning of your ever-after.”

Or maybe, maybe that moment’d already come and gone.

Maybe it had been the first time Holly stumbled down a wet hill, skidding into the police officer with an apologetic grin. Maybe it’d been the way she threw back all of Gail’s sass with a vinegar tongue and eyes that sparkled even in the dreary late-November morning, earning a rare genuine smile from the damp and and cross cop.

Maybe it’d been any of the thousand of moments between then and now.

Still, fate had intervened, and Gail said yes and sure and why not and “it’s better than hanging out with the two idiots, at least,” and their course was set, their map laid out, their destination clearly marked for anyone who was paying attention.

The concert–some chamber group–was good, which surprised Gail, and afterward when they stepped out into the mild evening air, so unusual for this late winter day, she wasn’t quite ready to part ways yet.

And that surprised her more.

So even though there was a war waging itself inside her–surprise, and anger at her surprise, and surprise at her anger, and anger at her anger, and surprise at her surprise, and anger–she pointed at a restaurant just down the street and asked Holly if she was hungry.

And when Holly said yes, and began walking in that direction, it wasn’t surprise Gail felt, but pleasure.

It was anticipation.

It was something she hadn’t felt in a long time.

It was excitement.

The feeling carried her through the dinner, through the pleasant conversation and the welcome sound of laughter–hers and Holly’s both. It felt like forever since she’d laughed like that, open and free. Honest. Real.

And when the bill came, Gail surprised herself again, slipping her credit card into the folder before Holly can even reach for it, or ask the waiter to split the check in two.

“Let me get it,” Holly said, putting a hand over Gail’s and sending a spark running up the blonde’s arm, straight into her chest.

But Gail just shook her head.

“No, no,” she said, “it’s my treat.”

And Holly looked at Gail for a perfect infinite second before nodding, and with a smile that reaches all the way up to the corner of her eyes, thanks her.

“Oh,” Gail responded, “don’t thank me. You’ll just have to pay me back with another dinner sometime.”

And there was a shift, then and there, between them. Not God closing a door or opening a window. But breaking down a wall, laying out a whole new room, changing the whole foundation of everything they thought they knew.

It wasn’t a first date.

Not yet.

But it would be.


	4. Come Here, Let Me Fix It

_It’s a stupid old football jersey.  
_

_It shouldn’t mean this much, it shouldn’t._

_But it does._

_But it was her dad’s, and it’s all she has left, and it does._

* * *

When Gail comes home, the last thing she expects to find is her wife sitting on the floor of their laundry room, leaning up against the dryer, crying over a shirt in her hands.

[It’s not the weirdest thing she’s come home to in the past nine months–that distinction goes to the night she came home late to find a naked Holly asleep on the bed curled around an empty jar of peanut butter with a half-finished can of black olives sitting on their nightstand.  _“Really,”_  Gail said wryly, removing the sticky spoon from her pillow.  _That_ , Holly had told her,  _is what you get when you don’t call to let your horny, pregnant wife know you’re going to be three hours late_. But when Holly started pulling Gail’s uniform off, and coming up on her knees to kiss at her neck, the blonde decided she didn’t exactly mind if their bed smelled like the inside of a third-grader’s lunchbox for a little while longer, and licked into her wife’s mouth, tasting her salty-sweet lips.]

“Hey, what’s wrong, nerd?” she asks, coming to kneel before the sniffling woman on the floor, but then she sees the shirt in her wife’s hands and understands.

Immediately.

“Oh, no,” she says, and takes the jersey to hold up and look at, “what happened?”

“It got caught up with something in the dryer, I think,” Holly answers, wiping her eyes and blushing. She knows she’s overreacting, knows that the hormones and the exhaustion and all the little daily frustrations of being so very pregnant are influencing her emotions right now.

But she’s sad too, genuinely so.

“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry,” Gail tells her, seeing the wide tear in the front, the fraying seams, the faded colors. “I know how much you love this shirt.”

Holly nods. It’s true. She’d told Gail the whole story long ago, the first time she ever brought it out and wore it in the other woman’s presence.

It was her dad’s old football jersey, one of the ones he wore when he played in college. It was faded grey and blue, and the fabric was softer than a cloud from years and years of washings. The numbers on the front had begun to peel and crack years ago, but still, the big “1” on the back was still visible, just like the proud “Stewart” stretched across the broad shoulders of the big shirt.

It was the only thing that brought her comfort in the days and weeks and months after her dad died. It was the only thing that could come close to the feeling of his strong arms around her.

That shirt had been–was, no, is–Holly’s security blanket. She’d slept in it for years, the brunette’s mother had said, refusing even to wear something else just long enough for the keeper jersey to be washed. She’d worn it on the bus to her own football games in high school, she’d taken it to college with her. And even now, on anniversaries–her father’s birthday or the day of his death–or moments that he should have been here to witness, or even just the days when everything feels like too much, a difficult case, an argument with Gail, she’ll pull it out and put it on. Let the memory of her father’s warmth fill her, keep her safe.

“I was washing laundry and when I pulled it out,” Holly tells her wife, “it was almost torn in two.”

She starts to cry again, leaning forward to rest her head against Gail’s as the blonde starts to gently rub her back.

“Okay, hon,” Gail says softly, “first, you’re supposed to be resting, not nesting.” And underneath the tears she can hear a small laugh.

She continues, “and second, let’s get you up off the floor and onto the couch, and then we’ll see just how bad the damage is, okay?”

Holly nods and takes the shirt back as Gail stands and reaches down to take her hands, too swollen now in the last weeks of her pregnancy for her to wear her rings anymore.

It takes a few minutes, but Holly is soon settled onto the couch, feet propped up on the ottoman, with a warm cup of tea.

“Okay,” Gail says, “let me see what we’ve got here.”

She holds the shirt up again and looks closely at the large tear on the front, the threadbare fabric.

Honestly, she knows, Holly will never be able to wear this again.

But maybe not all hope is lost.

“Let me see what I can do, babe,” she tells her wife, bending over to kiss the brunette gently on the cheek, “maybe I can fix it somehow.”

Holly nods, wiping at her eyes again.

“Okay,” she answers as Gail’s mind races with ideas of what to do and who to call, “it’s worth a shot.”

Her smile is sad but beautiful, and Gail feels her heart skip a beat at the sight of it.

“Now,” Gail ask as she puts the shirt aside and moves to the ottoman, lifting Holly’s legs to slide and sit under them before she starts massaging the soles of her wife’s sore, swollen feet, “what do you feel like for dinner? I’m thinking pizza.”

* * *

Three weeks later, Samuel Stewart Peck is born just after midnight.

His mothers, exhausted, are in love. With everything about him. His tiny toes, his sharp fingernails, his loud screech that echoes through the delivery room.

He’s perfect and he’s theirs and they’re in love.

Later, when Steve drops by to visit the new little family, and after he reluctantly hands his over his tiny red-headed nephew to Holly, Gail pulls him aside, hands him something and whispers in his ear. But Samuel stretches and yawns and Holly forgets all about it.

It’s the next morning when she remembers, pulling up to their house and seeing the balloons tied to the mailbox, the “Welcome Home” banner stretched across their porch.

“Steve,” she turns to ask as Gail clicks the button for the garage door.

And Gail nods.

“I asked him to pick up a few things before we got home, groceries and stuff,” she answers, “but I didn’t know he’d be decorating too.”

Inside, the house is quiet, and but for the neatly stacked dishes on the counter-top and the bouquet of flowers on the table, exactly the way they left it as they rushed out the door two days ago.

“Hey,” Gail says, carrying a sleeping Samuel in his car seat, “come with me for a minute? I want to show you something.”

She leads Holly down the hallway to the nursery, the room she and Steve and their dad had painted a gentle white one weekend, before moving in the crib and the dresser, the changing table and the rocking chair. Now there are curtains striped with soft blues and creamy browns, and a runner of little teddy bears playing sports stenciled around the walls.

And there, Holly sees as she steps into the room, hanging just above the crib, a large frame.

Her dad’s jersey, mended and pressed, forever preserved behind glass.  

Forever safe.

“I wanted him to grow up knowing that your dad was watching over him,” Gail whispers, and takes Holly’s hand with her free one.

There’s a muffled sound from the carrier and Holly looks down at her son, still sound asleep, and then back to the name and number on her dad’s shirt. He’ll fall asleep every night looking up at that shirt, that name and that number, and she knows then that it’s okay, she can let her dad go.

Not his memory, and not his spirit.

But this.

“Hey, are you okay,” Gail asks, concern plain in her voice, “I’m sorry that I couldn’t fix it, the shirt was just too–”

Holly stops her words with a squeeze of her fingers around Gail’s palm, and turns with a smile, with love in her eyes.

“No,” she says, “no, it’s perfect. It’s perfect.”

And she kisses her wife there, standing in the middle of their brand new baby’s nursery, and knows that no matter what, her father will always, always, be with them.


	5. I'll Walk You Home

She’s drunk when you find her, dancing by herself in the corner of the room with a circle of guys around her, cheering her on.

She’s drunk on cheap beer and tequila and pain, some tragedy she still can’t speak of, some ghost that’s buried itself into her flesh, whispering its lies into her bones.

You don’t know her past and you don’t ask. You don’t need to. You know enough.

You know that she’s beautiful and broken. You know that she’s smart, maybe smarter than you, but that one too many people who were supposed to love her, who were supposed to lift her up, have told her differently.

You know that even when she’s happy, even when she smiles, there’s a part of her that aches, a hint of sadness in her eyes. You know that there are nights when she sits awake for hours in the living room of your apartment, and nights when she falls asleep only to shatter the silence with her screams.

You know that you can’t touch her without telling her first, that you can’t come up behind her without announcing your presence, that there are scars she can’t or won’t explain.

You know there are nights like this, nights when the only way for her to think about tomorrow is to forget about today. Nights when the alcohol and the music and the loud buzz of people crammed into one frat house or another silences the voices in her head, the ghosts that live inside of her.

She’s the best and worst thing that’s ever happened to you, you know that too. This beautiful, broken, woman. This butterfly without wings.

You love her, desperately sometimes, and as much as it hurts to watch as she destroys herself, as much as it kills you to watch as she gives away the pieces you’ve so carefully stitched back together, you know you’ll never look away. You know you never could.

Because there are mornings when you come out to the kitchen and find her leaning against the counter, a steaming mug of coffee waiting for you. Afternoons when she skips class to sit with you in the quiet library, a warm hand on your thigh to keep you company as you flip through your flashcards. Evenings when you end up on the couch, wrapped around each other, letting the credits roll on into silence as she rubs her nose into the collar of your t-shirt.

Because of the nights when she lets you hold her, lets you walk her walls as she drifts off to sleep in your arms.

You love her because for all the nights like this, all the nights you’ve spent watching her be everyone else’s, there are more nights when she’s just yours.

“Come on, Gail,” you say softly, breaking into the eye of her storm, “let’s go home.”

And when she looks up at you, the desperate winds dying down inside of her, you can see.

She’s dangerous and she’s broken and she loves you too.


	6. Have a Good Day at Work

Gail wakes to a warm arm around her waist and firm thigh cradled between her legs, pressed up against her center.

God, she hasn’t experienced the awkwardness of a morning after in years. Maybe even since college. Not that she hasn’t had her regrettable escapades. It’s just that she’s always been exceptionally adept at avoiding waking up next to her one night stands, slipping out at the first chance open to her.

Even in her relationships, the nights she slept over were few and far in-between when compared  to the times she slipped her clothes back on in the dark and snuck out of her partner’s bedroom, preferring to return to her empty, familiar bed.

But this morning, as a soft groan escapes from her throat when the body in bed next to her shifts, feeling strong thigh muscles tense and release against her, she can’t bring herself to wish she’d left. She can’t regret rolling over the night before, tucking herself into her partner’s arms, and letting herself drift off to the sound of someone else’s heartbeat.

Holly’s heartbeat.

Gail smiles to herself, slowly opening her eyes.

Holly’s still asleep there, her head on the other half of the pillow they shared all night, and the police officer takes a moment to observe the brunette covertly.  She sees the almost invisible smattering of freckles that dot the doctor’s shoulders, the tiny scar just over Holly’s left eyebrow, and the smooth expanse of tan skin that disappears underneath the other woman’s soft, ivory bedsheets.

Gail knows that body now, knows the hidden canvas there, all of its curves and marks and perfect imperfections. She’d spent hours last night, memorizing every detail, learning all of its quirks with her fingers, her mouth, her tongue.

She knows that if she runs a single finger along Holly’s ribs, with a touch lighter, gentler, than a feather, the brunette will shudder and smile. That if she moves against the other woman’s thigh, spreading the wetness she can feel growing again all over the warm, smooth skin of Holly’s leg, the doctor will arch and press harder, harder into her, biting unconsciously at her lower lip as she does. That if she bends her head to take one of Holly’s breasts into her mouth, if she licks at Holly’s taut nipple, flicks her tongue over the tip, Holly will gasp and look at her with eyes so dark they’re almost black.

This morning, this first morning, Gail knows all of these things.  

And it’s okay, she realizes. It’s okay to know what Holly tastes like, the soft sounds her best friend makes as she climaxes. It’s okay to hold Holly close through the night, to wake up and watch the other woman’s nose twitch as tiny particles of dust float through the sun-drenched morning air.

This isn’t something she’s going to regret.

This isn’t something she needs to sneak away from.

This isn’t something she’s going to bury in the secret room of things she wishes she hasn’t done.

No, not at all.

Just over Holly’s shoulder, Gail can see the clock on the wall, the hand that moves closer and closer to the time when she absolutely, positively, has to leave this moment and enter a world she never thought could exist. A world in which she knows exactly how it feels to come apart in her best friend’s arms, exactly the sound of her name on Holly’s lips as the brunette enters her for the first time.

A world where the idea that Holly might hold the same feelings for her that have been growing, simmering, just under the blonde’s pale, pale skin isn’t just a fantasy.

Where it’s real.

“Hey,” she whispers, bringing a hand up to rest against Holly’s warm cheek, “Hol.” And watches as the brunette swallows, smacks her lips together, and slowly, slowly, opens her eyes.

“Hey,” Gail says again, and smiles as the doctor blinks blearily at her, as Holly’s lips curve into a smile as the world–as Gail–comes into focus.

“You said that already,” Holly whispers.  It comes out as an adorable croak, and Gail feels her heart skip a beat.

She can’t help but smile. “Yeah, I did,” the blonde says, and leans in to kiss at the corner of Holly’s mouth.

“Mmmmm,” Holly hums, sleep still weighing down her words, and pouts just the slightest when Gail pulls away.

“I have to go to work,” Gail whispers, and kisses Holly again, “but I didn’t want to leave without waking you to say goodbye.”  Her voice is apologetic, and it’s plain just how much she’d rather stay in bed, spend a lazy day continuing to explore Holly’s body, Holly’s heart.

She gasps as Holly takes her lower lip between her teeth, bites at it teasingly.

“I’m off today,” she says, her breath hot against Gail’s mouth, her arm moving from the small of the police officer’s back to cup at her firm ass, “but you should definitely come back tonight after your shift.”

And the low tone of the doctor’s voice leaves nothing to the imagination. She kisses Gail, letting her tongue thrust against the blonde’s, and laughs when the other woman pulls away with a frustrated growl.

Gail’s never been more conflicted, never considered calling in sick more seriously than in this moment, so wet she can almost smell herself, and Holly, naked and warm and hers to touch and taste and claim, right within her reach.

“Honey,” Holly says, seeing the officer’s dilemma, “I’m not going anywhere,” and Gail nods.

They’ve got time.

They’ve got a whole new world to explore.  A whole new future to plan out together.

“Have a good day at work,” the brunette says softly, with a gentle smile, kissing Gail once more, “and hurry home.”

 


	7. I Dreamt About You Last Night

You don’t have a favorite patient.

_(You do.)_

You’re not supposed to have a favorite patient.

_(You can’t help it.)_

You give each of your patients the best care possible.

_(That, at least, is true.)_

~

Maybe it’s because she was one of your firsts, way back when you were a brand new doctor in your first year of residency. Not the first brain you touched, not the first life you saved.

But the first one to touch you, to make an impact on who you would become as a doctor.

It was a cold January night, and you were in the middle of a 48-hour shift, trying to catch a nap in one of the on-call rooms just off-side the Emergency Room. You’d been dozing for ten, maybe twenty, minutes when your beeper went off, and you slipped your white coat on, wrapped your stethoscope around your neck, as you ran down the hall.

The ER was chaotic, always, but there was something about that night, that case, that made it even more so. The waiting room was always crowded, always full of hurting, worrying people, but that night it was more intense, cops everywhere you looked.  Two officers crowded into the exam room with the gurney as the paramedics spouted off the patient’s vitals and status almost faster than you could take the details in.

At first you thought they were there to protect you, that they’d brought in some violent criminal and were there to keep guard. But as the orderlies transferred the patient to the bed, you realized how wrong you were.

It was a young woman, not much younger than you. Her clothes, what was left of them, were torn and covered in blood from what looked like a stab wound right over her liver. And up at the head of the bed one of the nurses was steadily inflating the bag of the breathing mask that covered her lower face, forcing air into the woman’s lungs. But even from where you were, at the foot of the bed, you could see the purpling around her neck, stark against her pale, pale skin.

“Penetrating knife wound with rapid blood loss,” your attending said aloud as she examined the patient, hands moving rapidly over the woman’s torso, “and traumatic asphyxia. Had to shock her twice in the bus. First move, Stewart?”

You were so busy taking in the condition of the woman–the patient–that you didn’t hear your supervisor at first.

“Stewart,” she said again, sharply, “clock’s ticking, patient could code again any second, let’s go. What’s our first priority.”

You realized that time hadn’t been standing still–only you had been–and the busy ER floods back into your focus.

“Stabilization first. Establish an airway and then start her on two units of O neg. Draw and order labs–CBC and blood type. Call the OR to prep a theatre and have the bank send up at least four units as soon as the typing’s in.”

She was busy trying to slow down the bleeding and didn’t look over at you, but you could tell from the slight nod that she was impressed. “Airway was too compromised to intubate on-scene,” she said, “next step?”

“Attempt secondary method of ventilation, best option is a cricothyrotomy,” you answered, and saw a nurse already readying a tray next to the bed.

“You ever see one done,” your supervising doctor asked, and motioned you to the head of the bed when you nodded yes.

~

In reality, you’d only spent about twenty minutes with the unnamed woman–her name, you found out later from one of the officers in the waiting room, was Gail–but in the time it took to stabilize her for surgery, she’d changed your life. 

Struggling to save her, struggling to get her stable enough to transport to surgery?

It was the first time you really, truly, felt like a doctor.

~

You found out the whole story only later, as you updated her family in the crowded surgical waiting room.

She was a hero, Gail Peck. A cop just out of her rookie year, a brave officer who’d offered to go undercover to capture a serial killer. Who’d been abducted and assaulted and almost died fighting for her life as her fellow officers closed in on the perpetrator.

She’d saved the lives of countless women who might have been his future victims.

When her training officer told you that the guy would spend the rest of his life in prison, you were shocked to realize you wanted it to be otherwise. You, who had dedicated yourself to the preservation of human lives, wished him dead for what he’d done. For the beautiful life he’d almost succeeded in destroying.

Because even if you couldn’t tell him, this Officer Shaw with his smiling, hopeful eyes, you already knew.

If Officer Peck survived the surgery, it’d be a miracle.

Standing there, in the middle of the huge family of police officers there waiting for an update, you sent up a silent prayer to whomever might be listening.

It couldn’t hurt.

~

But the woman was strong.

She made it through the surgery. She made it through the night, the next twenty-four hours, the forty-eight after that.

She lived.

She just didn’t wake up.

The gods are fickle like that.

~

You’ve spent five years here, studying, training, practicing.

She’s been here almost the same length of time.

You know every detail of her life, every procedure she’s had, every minute element of her care. Sometimes, you think you see her brain waves spread across your dreams.

She’s the case you can’t let go. The proverbial one that got away.

But she’s more than that.

She’s someone you think you would have liked to know.

Her brother tells you stories of her childhood. Her parents nod politely and smile as you update them on her status. The officers who still come to visit–Oliver, mostly–keep you filled in on the precinct gossip.

The only thing that’s missing is her.

~

You started reading to her early on, ducking into her room on your breaks, the peaceful quiet always welcome in the busy hospital. You just felt like maybe she should get something out of the arrangement as well.

So you told her all about the world that she was missing, everything that was going on while she slept the days and years away.  You played the radio for her, mixed playlists of all your favorite songs. You worked your way through all the Sherlock stories and then started on Agatha Christie, and would have kept going through classic mystery series until Steve told you how much she hated the genre. It’s been fantasy and science-fiction ever since.

“She’s a secret nerd,” he told you once, right around Christmas, when he came to visit with a bag full of books for you from her childhood room, and you promised you’d never tell a soul.

And you never stopped hoping that one day, one day, she would wake.

~

It’s just an ordinary day in January.

The year is still full of New Year’s resolutions, promises that this year will be better.

There’s snow on the ground and a chill in the air, but the sun shines bright in the sky and your coffee is hot and sweet as you walk back to the hospital from the cafe down the street.

When your pager goes off, you toss back the rest of your coffee, feeling the burn against the back of your throat, and dump the empty cup in a nearby garbage as you check the code.

And when you see it, when you see the digits on the small screen, the room number indicated there, you run.

~

Her eyes are blue.

You’ve known that for years. You’ve seen them before. In exams. In pictures.

But they were nothing like now.

Open. Aware.

Alive.

And when she speaks, just a day later, with a voice hoarse and rough from years of disuse, it’s the most beautiful sound you think you’ve ever heard.

“I thought I dreamed you,” she says slowly, carefully, and looks at you with a curious expression, like she can’t quite believe you’re here, you’re real.

You know the feeling.


	8. Take My Seat

There’s a change coming.

Gail can feel it in the air.

The war is almost over.

Every morning the front page boasts of another victory, another battle won, the story wired in from their correspondents overseas, on the front lines.

Every night the tinny voices from the gabber on the nightly news promises that the boys would be home soon.

The relief in the air is palpable, the country working to ready the homeland for the return of husbands and sons, fathers and brothers. As the people left behind, left back in the cities and the countrysides, try to recall what life used to be like, before the rationing and the casualty lists. Before the terrifying nightmare of global war swept in from the seas and hung, like a dark and heavy cloud, over every citizen.

Now a whole nation, bound together in its time of need, prepares to take its first uncertain steps into what comes next, into the unknown.

Everywhere she looks, people are smiling, happy for the first time since Hitler’s name came into their awareness. Everywhere she goes, people are just waiting for permission to celebrate, to rejoice, to throw off their collective mourning and dance and play and sing again.

Everyone but Gail, that is.

Oh, she’s happy that the war is coming to an end, of course. She’s looking forward to welcoming her big brother home again, looking forward to the moment when Steve is swinging her up in his arms on the platform at the station, big old stupid smile on his face, as she buries her head into the rough fabric of his RCAF uniform and makes him promise never to do something as stupid as enlisting again.

But beyond that, beyond saying goodbye to her ration book and evenings no longer spent sorting rubbish into piles for the Civil Defense boys to pick up in the morning …

Beyond no longer needing to cross out the names of boys she knew once who were no more in her high school yearbook, her silent count of the dead, and the sight of mourning mothers, their eyes as red as the blood their sons spilled in defending the colors of the proud Union Jack …

Beyond all the end to the national grief, the universal hardship, Gail Peck is dreading the changes the end of the war would bring.

Already women are slowly leaving the factories, the offices where they’ve worked for the past three or four years. Leaving their jobs for the men to pick right up where they left off. Already the men who stuck around, who couldn’t cut it in uniform or served too great a purpose here at the home-front are looking around with judging eyes at the women who wear slacks on the street car on their way their jobs at the munitions plant, who still go out for a drink after work instead of home to cook and clean, to knit and mend, to prepare themselves for their imminent transformation back into wives and mothers.

Just today, in fact, one of the detectives at the precinct where her father was a senior inspector sat down on the corner of her desk and let his eyes linger a little too long where they shouldn’t have been looking. A fondness for sweets and coke-bottle glasses had exempted Clarence Howard from military service, and a lack of better candidates on the homefront had given him far more authority than his abilities as an officer would have earned him otherwise.

“You and me oughta catch the show tonight,” he said, leaning into her, smelling of mustard and an overdose of Brylcreem, “there’s a Betty Grable double-feature. Dame’s got gams that’d make a blind man weep.”

Gail tries not to gag at the thought of sitting next to Clarence for four hours, trying to fend off his advances in the dark of the theatre.

“Actually,” she says with a sugary sweetness reserved only for the vilest of those who infringe on her sense of space, “I’m afraid I’ve already got plans tonight, Detective Howard. I’ll have to decline your kind invitation.”

Her tone escapes him completely, and he smiles down at her, a bit of something–spinach, perhaps–leftover in his teeth from lunch.

“Betcha a nice-looking girl like you’s got a bunch of poor Joes expectin’ a kiss when they step off the boat,” he says with a barely concealed leer. “You just make sure you save me a spot on your dance card when it starts filling up.”

Somehow, Gail disguises her shudder as a shiver, and excuses herself to use the washroom.  It’s a lame excuse for an escape, but she grabs for it nonetheless.

Inside, the small room is warm but quiet. Just a sink and a chair, and a door leading to a single toilet beyond. It’s nothing much, but it’s a sanctuary nonetheless. Gail knows that she’ll have a few minutes peace, at least, to sit, to think, at least, before she has to go back out to her desk, before she has to put up with rude people on the phone and smug police officers once again.

Maybe, she entertains a thought for a moment, it’ll be better when all the men are back, when the station doesn’t need her to fill the shoes of some peach-fuzz rookie assigned to file and fetch for his first few months on the job. At least she won’t have to put up with the looks and the nicknames and the way they talk to her lately, like she’s simple, like she’s a child.

But no, her heart reasons, it won’t be better. She’ll be shuttered back up in her parents’ big house, spending days going from neighborhood socials to charity committees to awkward coffee hours in stiff, sterile parlors, her mother always at her side. Always critical, always judging, always telling Gail all the ways she could be a better daughter, a more appropriate lady.

Before the war, she’d been suffocating, but she’d survived because there’d never been any hope of a different kind of life. Not outside of storybooks and picture shows, at least.

But now? Now?

After the sweet taste of freedom, of independence, however limited and conditional it’s been?

Going back to the way things were will kill her.

She just knows it.

The door to the washroom opens and startles Gail out of her thoughts.

“Oh, Miss Peck, I didn’t mean to interrupt,” the dark-haired woman says, her tone apologetic.

But Gail waves her concern away.  “It’s no trouble, Nurse Stewart,” she tells the woman in the neat white uniform, the only other woman in the precinct, “just needed a few minutes away from the bullpen. You understand.”

And she did, of course.

They’re friendly enough with each other, having crossed paths a few times over the past couple of years. Holly’d been training to be a nurse before the war broke out, and once it did, and the men started shipping overseas, her uncle’d asked her to come and serve as his assistant in the county morgue when his apprentice’d been called up.

She, too, Gail knows, will soon be replaced. Some young soldier home from war in need of a job will soon be delivering autopsy results and cleaning scalpels for the firm but kindly Doc Stewart.

Gail doesn’t need to ask what will happen to Holly after that, it’s the same story as everywhere else. She’ll end up back in some country hospital ward, wiping brows and taking temperatures. At least until a man manages to capture her affections and convince her to marry.

“Here,” Gail says, seeing the way the nurse fidgets nervously, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, “have a seat. You look like you could use it.”

She rises and they switch places in the small washroom, bellies brushing up against each other in the narrow space. The temperature seems to have risen now, two bodies radiating heat, or maybe it’s the radiator in the corner that causes a line of sweat to appear on the small of Gail’s back.

“Thank you,” Holly says with genuine appreciation, “I’ve been on my feet all morning.” She slips off one of her plain black heels, sensible and sturdy, and stretches out her toes.

Just outside the door, Gail can hear Clarence’s droll voice, and rolls her eyes in response, much to Holly’s amusement.

“I take it you’re in hiding,” the nurse says with a grin and an understanding look.

“Detective Howard,” Gail answers, “is one of the most insufferable and insulting boors I’ve come across here so far. The other day he brought in a suspected john they caught sniffing around the alleys behind the theatre, the one over on Fifth and Chambers?”

Holly nods, familiar with the area.

“Well,” Gail continues, “as I was walking past them with some coffee for a meeting, he flat out pinched my bottom and blamed it on the suspect he had sitting there, handcuffed to the desk.”

And though her voice is harsh as she tells Holly the story, it’s not embarrassment coloring her face but indignation that a buffoon like Detective Howard could ever think she’d be interested in him.

“Oh, I understand,” Holly says, lips pressed thinly together, “just last week he came in for a report when Uncle Ed was out for lunch and asked me what kind of lug I thought I’d be able to land after the war, an odd cluck like me who played around with body parts all day long. He’s certainly not my favorite either. But I just told him it was awfully brave of him to say that to a girl who’d turned him down every time he tried to hook me.” And then she smiles.

It was strange, they’d never really had much of a conversation, Nurse Stewart and Gail, but now, as the sand ran down on their time working in proximity to each other, the blonde found herself regretting it. Regretting listening to her mother about not mixing herself up in the darker shades of life at the precinct. Regretting not getting to know the pretty, funny, smart woman before the world settled back into its normal quiet patterns again.

She smiles down at the seated woman, and knows that the thought of Clarence’s face at that comment will get her through at least one more afternoon of his sideways looks and boorish jokes.

“I should get back to my desk, the inspectors usually take their coffee soon,” she says, sorry to have to leave.

But Nurse Stewart reaches out, takes her hand before she can squeeze past and head back into the busy police station.

“Miss Peck,” she says, “I don’t know about you, but I feel like a show tonight. Would you care to come out? I hear there’s a Betty Grable double-feature downtown. Don’t say it’ll be too late–you can just share my room at the boarding house nearby if you’d rather not take the trolley car back after.”

Gail laughs.

“That sounds swell,” she says, and turns the handle of the door, “I’ll meet you there?”

Holly nods, smiling widely, and Gail steps out into hall, heads back to her desk.

There’s a change coming, alright.

She can feel it.

 


	9. I Saved a Piece for You

“No,” the girl says, kicking at the little boy’s legs and scoffing when he howls in anger, “it’s mine.” **  
**

“Abigail Peck, Trevor Carson, what’s going on over there?” the daycare leader calls, coming over to investigate the loud commotion in the corner of the playroom.

Trevor’s tears fall harder when he realizes he’s got the grown-up’s attention.

“Abby, did you kick him?” Miss Jessica asks, a small frown on her gentle face.

The tiny strawberry-blonde starts to cry, and the teacher’s heart melts. Little Abby Peck’s had a rough week. Her father, a local police officer, was shot while on duty over the weekend, and the daycare teachers have all noticed how worried and stressed the four-year-old has been lately.

“He tried to steal my blankie,” Abby tells the teacher, the whine in her voice is more exhaustion than anything else, “but it’s mine. My daddy gave it to me when I was a baby.”  

  
The piece of fabric Abigail shakes at the adult is worn and tattered, and there are holes in the corners of the dark blue fabric, four years of tiny thumbs worrying their way through the pattern of tiny stars and large moons.

Once upon a time, it was probably large enough to wrap a baby in, to tuck in the corners so the new soul felt as safe and warm as she’d been in the womb. But over the years, as little Abby dragged it through the house behind her unsteady feet, as it was sentenced to countless cycles in the laundry, bits and bits of it seemed to disappear.

Now, it was just big enough to cover the little girl during naptime, or be wadded up as a pillow on hot afternoons. Now it was covered with zigzag scars where some careful, gentle hand had sewn up the tears and hemmed up the fraying edges.

But still, it was beloved. Still, it was the recipient of that purest form of the emotion, the child’s love. A love that saw past the what the blanket had become, to what it had been. A love that didn’t see the faded colors or the hanging threads, just the sweet comfort of a soft touch against the cheek, the gentle warm weight to keep away the bad dreams.

“Oh, Abby,” Miss Jessica says, kneeling down before the girl, whose lip was starting to tremble, “Trevor isn’t going to take your blankie, but you shouldn’t have kicked him.”

She looked over at the boy, and seeing no harm done made a quick decision. “Can you tell Trevor you’re sorry, Abby,” she asks, pleased when Abby nods.

“I’m sorry, Trevor,” Abby tells the boy, and the teacher chooses to overlook the ‘not-very-sorry’ tone in her voice under the circumstances. Abby’s always been a very sensitive child, and they all know she’s feeling the absence of her father keenly. The teachers have all been trying to watch out for her over the past week, and have all tried to take a little extra time with her.

“And Trevor, can you tell Abby that you’re sorry for trying to take something that isn’t yours?”  

The boy offers a similar apology, and the teacher smiles down at both of them, pleased that they’ve avoided a larger breakdown from either child.

“Okay, Trev, you go over to Miss Jeanine and get ready for storytime. Abby and I are going to sit here for a moment and talk, okay?”

Trevor hops over to the tall, dark-skinned teacher near the rocking chair and bookshelf, the incident already fading from his mind as Jessica turns her attention back to Abigail.

“Abby,” she says, sitting down on the floor, “you know that your blankie is supposed to stay in your cubby until naptime. What’s the matter, sweetheart?”

The little girl rubs at her liquid blue eyes, and the teacher opens her arms, wrapping them tightly around Abby when she falls into them, going limp against the older woman’s body.

“I miss my daddy,” Abby says, and her small voice is tired and thick with tears.

“Oh, honey, I know,” Jessica says, rocking back and forth on the floor, hoping to soothe her tiny charge, “but he’s going to be okay. Your mama told me so this morning.”

They sit there for a long while, long enough for Abigail to fall asleep in her teacher’s arms.

She’s still sleeping an hour later–gently transferred to a cot long ago–when her mother arrives to pick her up, son following behind as usual with a heavy backpack and a more-recently adopted scowl.

“Everything okay today,” Elaine Peck asks as she stoops to lift her daughter, clingy with sleep, from the cot into her arms.

“She’s a little worried about Mr. Peck,” Jessica shares, “and had a little cry right before naptime, but otherwise she was fine.” And Mrs. Peck nods her head, smiling stiffly.

“My husband should be coming home tomorrow,” she passes on to the teacher as the three head toward the exit, “so hopefully Abigail will be back to normal soon,” and Jessica smiles. She’s pleased to hear that Abigail might be back to her normal, happy self.

“Oh, wait,” she calls after them, noticing the blanket left behind on the cot, “don’t forget this!”

She jogs to catch up and tucks it under Abby’s cheek on her mother’s shoulder.

“Ah,” Elaine says gratefully, “thank you. We’d have no peace tonight without the blanket. I know she’s a little old to have a blanket, but it’s been a godsend this week.”

“She’s a great little girl, Mrs. Peck,” the daycare teacher says, “and she’s smart and strong. Just a little worried this week, that’s all. She’ll be fine once everything gets back to normal,” and Mrs. Peck looks at her gratefully.

Then her son opens the car door, and after securing Abby in the car seat, the Peck family pulls out of the parking lot and heads for home.

* * *

Gail looks back and forth at the people sitting around the table with her–her mother, her brother and his wife, her Holly–but everyone looks as confused as she is.

“Do you know what he’s doing,” she whispers to her mother, glancing up to the ceiling, the sound of her father’s footsteps overhead.

But Elaine just shakes her head. “I stopped asking that man what was going on in his head years ago,” she says with a dry chuckle, and takes another sip of her wine.

“Seriously, no one else thinks this is weird? We announce that we’re pregnant and dad just get up and leaves?”

The disbelief is heavy in her voice, and Steve rolls his eyes as Holly reaches for her wife’s hand and squeezes it.

“Honey,” the doctor says softly, but footsteps in the hall interrupt whatever she had been planning to say.

“I found it,” Bill Peck announces as he steps through the swinging door that connects the dining room and the kitchen.

In his hands is a small box, tied with string, and he comes to stand before his daughter and his wife, a wide smile on his face.

“Abby,” her father says softly, and swallows, “I’ve been saving this for a long time. And now that you’re going to be a mother, I think it’s time I finally return it to you.”

Gail looks around the table again, but no one seems to know what might be in the box. No one except her mother, whose face has gone soft and nostalgic, as if she’s just remembering something she’d long forgotten.

“Open it, baby,” Holly says and nudges at the blonde.

When she lifts the lid of the box, Gail inhales sharply.

“Dad,” she whispers, and her voice is thick with emotion.

He smiles down at her, his baby girl. “There’s not much left of it, but I salvaged what I could.”

It’s with shaking fingers that she pulls the item out of the box. A piece of fabric, a scrap now really. Dark blue, and full of stars and moons and little threadbare spots where small hands rubbed the soft fabric against tender baby skin.

“You saved it,” Gail asks, almost unable to believe what she’s seeing, what she’s holding in her hands.

“Of course I did,” her father answers, and kisses her forehead, “of course I did.”

 


	10. I'm Sorry for Your Loss

“Seriously,” Holly said, shaking her head, “you’re being ridiculous.”

But Gail ignored her, and continued to carry the box in her hands, placing it down on the picnic table in the backyard. The picnic table covered in candles and with several bunches of gas station  _“I’m sorry I forgot your birthday”_ flowers.

“We are gathered here today–” the blonde began, a peaceful, serene expression on her face, eyes closed and hands outstretched as if she was offering a blessing.

Holly rolled her eyes. “That’s not even the right opening,” she protested, “that’s for weddings.”

“–to say goodbye to a most beloved pair of running shoes,” Gail finished, and lifted the lid of the box to reveal a pair of formerly purple and white sneakers, now a sort of grayish-bruise color. She’d lined the inside of the box with an old t-shirt, and made a pillow of some holey socks that had been sitting next to the dryer for weeks.

“Would anyone like to say a few words before we return the deceased to where they came from,” the blonde asked, eyes twinkling with amusement.

“Okay,” Holly said, exasperated and throwing her hands up into the air, “I get it, Gail. They’re gross, they smell. I’ll go to the store after work tomorrow.”

Gail smirked at her girlfriend.

“Holly, they don’t just smell. They’re practically toxic. They funked up the whole garage. This morning I had to rub peppermint oil all up my nose just to be able to pick them up without gagging. They’re rank and disgusting and they’re practically falling apart. You needed new shoes like a month ago.”

She poked at the brunette’s shoulder playfully, and again until Holly dropped the fake pout she’d put on and smiled.

“Okay, yes,” the doctor said, “they’re disgusting. I’m sorry I smelled up the garage. It’s just, you know how busy the lab’s been these past couple weeks. I haven’t had time to go shopping yet.”

I know, babe,“ Gail grinned, "that’s why I ordered these for you, they came yesterday.”  

She reached under the tablecloth on the picnic table and pulled out a shoebox, handing it to her girlfriend with a pleased look on her face.

“These are the exact same shoe,” Holly exclaimed happily, “how did you find them, and in my size? I looked last month when I realized mine were getting grungy but none of the stores had them!”

“Oh, Doctor Stewart,” Gail said slyly, “the internet is a vast and mysterious place, filled with anything you could ever want.”

But Holly just narrowed her eyes.

“Okay, I went on eBay,” the police officer confessed, “but the listing said ‘brand new’ and I checked, they’ve never been worn, you can see for yourself.” She took a shoe and turned it over so Holly could see the pristine newness of the soles.

“Baby,” Holly whispered, and there amusement and adoration all mixed together with love in her voice.

Gail blushed pink, and ducked her head. “Okay, now let’s get rid of these,” she said, and reached to grab the cover for the box with the old shoes.

But Holly caught her arm. “No, no,” the brunette said, mischief in her eyes, “you asked if anyone wanted to say anything?”

Gail looked at her blankly.

“To the shoes,” Holly prompted, “I’d hate to let them go without saying a proper goodbye.”

She grinned then, and Gail started to laugh.

“Oh, I’ll give them a proper goodbye,” the blonde teased, grabbing the box and running for the back of the yard, toward the garbage can off the alley.

Holly chased after her, “Come back, I want to pay my respects!”

* * *

It was hours before either of them remembered the candles.

“Going for a run,” Gail said, sliding her arms around her girlfriend and playing with the terrycloth tie of the brunette’s rose-colored robe.

“Hmmmm,” Holly answered, and leaned back into the shorter woman’s embrace, “no, I think got my cardio in for the day.” The brunette smiled as she felt her partner snicker quietly against the back of her neck. “I just came down to check on the candles, make sure we weren’t going to burn the house down or anything.”

Gail hugged her tighter.

“Honey,” the blonde said, pulling at the belt and slipping her hand in to rest against her lover’s naked belly, “if we were going to burn anything down, it wouldn’t be because of the candles.”

Holly's smile got wider.

 


	11. You Can Have Half

It was a set-up, of course, she should have seen it coming. Some friend of a friend, a favor she owed Traci from way back when they were rookies.

And it’s not like she had any other plans for the evening, or any other prospects lining up to take her out to dinner. None that weren’t hand-picked by Elaine to make her life miserable, that is.

So when Traci called her, desperate after realizing she wouldn’t be able to get out of work and meet up with one of her old high school friends, Gail said yes.

Well, she said, “sure,” and “now we’re even,” and “this better not suck.”

But as far as Traci was concerned, it was a yes.

~

The restaurant was nice, a white tablecloths and more than one fork kind of place. But Gail’d grown up with police balls and municipal galas, and salad forks had stopped intimidating her years ago.

Still, she wiped her palms on the side of her pants as she stepped up to the maitre’d, and fought the urge to tug the cuffs of her sleeves over her hands, a silly tic she should have gotten over years and years ago, or so her mother always told her. It was the thought of having to talk with someone, make conversation, that was causing sweat to build up at the base of her spine.

Her biggest fear.

The one she’d never quite been able to kick.

People who didn’t know her well always thought she was rude, off-putting. She’d heard the nicknames, “Ice Queen,” “Officer Bitch.” And so many more.

But the people who knew her, the people who eventually were granted access behind her thick, high walls, they knew better. They knew that underneath the prickly skin and the sharp tongue was a woman who was shy and kind, who was loyal, who loved intensely.

They knew the cold exterior and the sarcasm, the eye-rolling and the scoffs were just a tactic, just a mask she put on in order to help her deal with the world and the people in it.

They knew that Gail Peck was nothing more than a than a woman whose hands got clammy and whose mouth got dry whenever she found herself in a situation with people she didn’t know.

Like now. Like this odd, unexpected blind-date that had her balling up her hands and swallowing against the sand on her tongue as she was led to her table.

_She could do this_ , Gail thought to herself, seeing the lone figure at the table in the corner, the long brown hair.  _She could get through this. She’d survive._

_Somehow she always did before._

~

Except she doesn’t need to survive.

She was having fun. She was enjoying herself.

Traci’s friend–Holly–was smart and funny and full of amusing stories about her time in med school and her work as a pathologist. She had a crooked smile, and these deep dimples, and an adorable mole set high on her cheekbone.

And her voice, it was low and sultry, and it sunk deep into Gail’s center, digging into her foundations and settling there, heavy and pleasant and warm. It kept her there, long past the point where she’d normally make up some excuse to disappear–and emergency at work, a headache, a roommate in dire need of assistance.

They talked for hours, about their families, their friends. Gail heard several of Traci’s secret embarrassing high school stories, told Holly all about her idiot roommates, the men and women she serves with at the Fifteen.

Three hours into their dinner, the only strike Gail had found in the other woman, the attractive and amusing doctor sitting across from her, was her choice in desserts.

“I’ll have the apple pie a la mode,” Holly’d told the waiter, and returned the smile Gail gave her as the man wrote down her order in his book.

“And for you,” he said, turning to the blonde.

“The same, thank you,” she answered, folding the dessert menu and handing it over to him.

“I’m sorry, miss,” he said apologetically, “but there was only one serving of pie left. Can I interest you in anything else? The cheesecake, perhaps?”

Holly must’ve seen the frown on her face, because she put her hand gently on the waiter’s arm.

“No, she can have it,” the doctor offered, “I’ll just–”

“We’ll share it,” Gail decided, and put the matter to rest. “One apple pie a la mode, two forks,” she told him.

~

“… and so then, when we showed him the X-ray, he turned the brightest shade of red I’ve ever seen and confessed,” Holly said, finishing another story of her time moonlighting as an ER resident for extra money.

Gail smiled and nodded, reaching out to take another forkful of pie from the plate between them.

But her fork hit ceramic instead, the pie was gone and all the was left were crumbs and the last melted drops of the sweet vanilla ice cream it had been served with.

“You let me eat it all,” the blonde exclaimed, “we were supposed to share!”

But Holly laughed, and smiled softly at her, fondly even.

“We were, but you were just enjoying it too much for me to deprive you of any more. The faces you were making were good enough for me,” she said with the slightest hint of a wink.

“It was just so good,” Gail whispered loudly, and licked unconsciously at her lower lip.

Holly reached over to lay a hand over the blonde’s. “I could tell, Gail,” she said quietly, “and I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

~

The valets were slow with their cars, and they stood, waiting together, in the cold Toronto wind.

“So–” Gail started, just as Holly opened her mouth to speak.

“No, you go,” the doctor said, and gestured for the blonde to continue.

“This wasn’t an accident, was it,” Gail asked, “Traci getting caught up at work and not wanting to cancel on you?”

Holly laughed loudly, loud enough that an older couple walking past on the sidewalk turned to look at them.

“No, I don’t think it was. How long did it take you to figure it out,” she asked, and her smile reached all the way up to her eyes.

Gail answered sheepishly. “Not until just a few minutes ago, when you helped me into my coat,” she admitted. “But why the subterfuge?”

Holly looked over at her, a guilty blush on her cheeks. “I noticed you a while ago, some police function, and then you were at a few of my crime scenes. I didn’t know how to approach you, or if you’d even be open to it,” she confessed, “so I hit Traci up for information. I think she finally decided to take matters into her own hands.”

Gail was speechless.

“Just so you know, I didn’t know until I saw you in the restaurant. She told me we were celebrating something,” Holly continued. “Look, I’m sorry, I should have just gone up to you and said something. We can just–”

But Gail silenced her with a sweet, gentle kiss.

“Two things,” the blonde said, pulling away for just a moment. “First, we let Traci stew for a few days.”

Holly looked into Gail’s eyes and nodded.

“And second?” she asked.

“As for the second,” Gail said, and winked as she slipped something into Holly’s hand, “you’ll have to take me out again to find out.”

 


	12. Take My Jacket, It's Cold Outside

If there’s one good thing about being a cop in the middle of fucking nowhere, it’s that nothing ever happens.

Most nights she can just pick a spot along the heavily wooded road that cuts through the outskirts of her little mountain territory, and wait for the odd car to pass through, its occupants speeding along to somewhere–anywhere–else.

And if every now and again the teenagers get rowdy, and throw a party somewhere out in one of the old abandoned cabins that polka-dot through the forest, or one of the MacArthur brothers drinks too much of their homemade moonshine–a past-time that Gail, for the most part, chooses to overlook–and wanders around the empty downtown butt-naked on a freezing winter night, well, what’s life without a little excitement now and then?

For the most part, Gail’s content. Happy, even, if a little bored.

But except on the loneliest nights, she doesn’t regret a thing. Not leaving Toronto, not leaving her job or her friends. And certainly not leaving her family, the price of whose respect she finally–finally–realized was always going to be too high.

And those nights are few and far between. And not tonight, by any means.

Tonight she is happy, a still-warm double cheeseburger from Maggie’s diner in the passenger-seat of her cruiser, a donut and a mostly-full thermos of coffee for later.

The spot she picks to park her cruiser is well-known to the locals, but tends to catch those just passing-through a little too fast for her speed-gun. None tonight have piqued her interest yet, not more than the book in her hands, anyway.

Every now and again her radio crackles, Greg’s on dispatch tonight and he and the other deputy, Clark, have a running trivia competition on the nights they work together. It’s comforting, a small memory of home, and every now and again she’ll even call in with an answer, add another point behind her name on the perpetual scoreboard over at the station.

Tonight’s category is 80s sitcoms, and Gail listens to her two closest friends in town bicker over which Jackson brother Tootie preferred.

In the distance, from just around the curve, she sees the long, bright beams of headlights, an approaching car, and puts her book down, turning off the lamp she keeps in the cruiser for nights like this.

It’s an older Chevy, mid-90s, maybe, and light in color. And even though it’s not going too fast around the curve–if anything, the driver is a little slow–there’s something about it that catches her attention. The way it swerves here, and there, and back again. As if the driver isn’t quite in control.

She lets it get a little closer before turning on her lights, just at the same time it takes a sharp right and goes off the road into the drainage ditch that runs alongside. It stops before the treeline, though, and Gail’s glad for it. She’s attended more than one accident in this area, where a car going too fast barrels straight into one of the strong old trees that line the choppy rise of the mountains.

Gail radios in, interrupting her coworkers’ argument, and requests they contact the firehouse, have one of the ambulance crews awoken and sent out to her location.

She yanks open the driver’s-side door and swears.

The driver is a woman. About her age. Very pregnant.

She’s cursing and crying and clutching at her stomach, which even Gail can see ripples with the strength of her contractions.

“Boys, gonna need you to light a fire under that bus–female, roughly 35, superficial injuries but in active labor, late-stages by the looks of it.”

Greg responds in the affirmative, and Gail kneels down next to the driver.

“Ma’am, ma’am, can you hear me? Can you tell me your name? Are you injured?”

The woman, face scrunched up in pain, shakes her head as she struggles to breathe.

“Holly,” she says through her pants, “the baby … coming.”

And when Gail looks down, she sees the wet seat.

“Okay, Holly,” she says, mind racing, “I’m going to bring my cruiser over, and we’re going to get you into the back seat–it’s clean and dry, okay?”

* * *

Once Holly is settled into the back of the cruiser, Gail radios for an update on the ambulance.

“Delayed,” Greg tells her, “the MacArthur brothers decided to try and do some wiring after testing out their latest batch. No permanent damage, but they had to shock Llewellyn a couple of times, I heard.”

“Yeah, well, while those two idiots try to kill themselves, I’ve got someone actually being born here, Gregory,” she whispers fiercely into her radio.

“Sorry, Gailio,” he tells her, “but it’s going to be at least thirty minutes. If you think it’s necessary, you can bring her in yourself.”

She responds with something she knows will get her a talking to when Deborah gets around to transcribing the recording in the morning.

“Okay, Holly, the ambulance is going to be a while, so if it’s okay with you, I’m going to try to remember all that EMT training they gave us at the academy and see how far you are.”

Her hands are gentle, even through the thin latex of her gloves, as she draws down the soaked leggings the woman wears and takes stock of how far along this labor is.  

“Okay,” she says, a little shakily, trying not to scare the poor woman in her backseat, “pretty sure I see a head. Looks like we’re not going to be able to wait for that ambulance.”

Holly grips the seat tighter and groans loudly.

“Um, Greg,” Gail says, thumbing the switch for her radio, “I’m going to need you to patch me through to the ambulance. We’re kind of at the point of no return here.”

“Jesus,” he answers, “ten-four,” and patches her through.

* * *

It doesn’t take long.

Twenty minutes of pushing, of encouraging, of gently helping to guide this new life out of a woman she’s just met, and a loud cry breaks into the night.

Holly throws her head back in relief, her guttural moans fading into the darkness, as Gail cradles the newborn in her arms, and follows the directions of the EMT on the radio. She checks his airway and wraps him in a warm flannel blanket from the trunk of her squad.

“It’s a boy,” she says, and lays a hand on the other woman’s thigh, the intimacy of the moment not lost on her, “a big, healthy-looking boy.”

There, in the backseat of her squad car, belly still rippling with contractions as her body prepares to deliver the afterbirth, Holly says nothing, just cries.

Whether they’re tears of joy or sadness, Gail cannot tell.

* * *

The ambulance comes soon after, and mother and child are permanently parted after Laverne, the EMT who’d talked Gail through the delivery, hands the officer a pair of scissors and shows her where to cut.

Then, Holly and her son are transferred to the gurney, Gail helping to bear the new mother’s weight. The dark-haired woman shivers, from shock maybe, more than the cold, and the blonde shrugs off her thick, fur-lined coat, and gently lays it over Holly’s shoulders.

“Okay, ma’am,” Laverne says, “we’re going to take you to the hospital now. Officer Peck here is going to follow us in and take your statement once the doctors have checked you and your son over.”

She turns to Gail. “Can you retrieve her bag or wallet from the vehicle and run her name,” she asks, “we’re going to need her info.”

But a panicked look comes over Holly’s face, and she reaches out with her free hand to grab at Gail’s arm.

“No,” she says, and the desperate fear in her voice sends a shiver down Gail’s spine, “no, please. You can’t. Please don’t–”

“Okay, okay, Holly,” Gail says, “I’m just going to grab your bag and then I’ll meet you at the hospital. I won’t run your info, okay, I swear? Laverne, I’m going to radio the station and have them pass along that our friends here are to be entered in a Jane Doe and her son John.”

She looks Holly in the eyes, “I’ll meet you there and then we can talk. I promise, Holly.”

Slowly, the woman releases the officer’s arm, nods, and lets the EMTs lift the gurney into the ambulance.

* * *

It’s morning before Gail can talk to the woman from last night again.

She spends an hour or so taking notes of the scene, drawing out the accident diagram. Holly’s personal effects were easy enough to gather up from the car–a purse holding her wallet, an Ontario driver’s license, about two hundred dollars cash–and a small duffel bag, clothes hastily thrown in.

Gail sighs.

She’d seen this coming. The moment Holly’d grabbed her hand the night before, the terror in her eyes, her voice. She’d seen it all before. Big city, small town. It didn’t matter. There was always a woman on the run from a man, from his anger and his fists.

When she gets to the hospital, Holly’s asleep in her room, her son in the little plastic bassinet aside her bed.

She tells herself that it’s her responsibility, she’s technically not off her shift until she gets the incident report anyway. But it’s more than that that has her settling quietly into the chair at the foot of the bed, pulling out her book to wait. It was something that she couldn’t explain, something that pulled at her, something that tugged at all of her rougher corners.

The baby starts to whimper about twenty minutes into her vigil, and when his mother doesn’t wake immediately, Gail carefully moves to pick him up, lift him out of his little crib and slowly rock him in her arms.

“Hey, there, little guy,” she whispers, almost coos, and runs her finger along his long, straight nose, smiling as he scrunches up his face.

Holly awakes a little later, eyes wide with fear until she looks around, realizes where she is.

“It’s okay, Holly,” Gail says from where she sits, sleeping boy in one arm and open book in the other, “you’re safe. Your son is right here.”

She stands and moves to the side of the bed, gently lays the boy down in his mother’s arms.

“He’s pretty handsome,” Gail says as she watches Holly with her son, “looks a lot like his mother.”

Holly looks up at her, and the police officer feels an ache in her chest to see a tendril of fear there still.

“I mean it, Holly,” she says again, “you’re safe. You were admitted as a Jane Doe, no one but my boss knows your name or identity. Your husband won’t be able to find you here.”

The flinch at the mention of a husband confirms Gail’s suspicions.

“But I need you to tell me about him, about why you’re on the run. It’s the only way I can get the ball rolling to keep you safe,” she says. “He’s hurt you?”

Holly nods, and it isn’t long before she’s telling the story to the officer. A stupid, foolish marriage as a teenager, long before she’d had the time to explore the world or what and who she wanted out of it. How every set-back, every failure, every reminder of his lack of success turned her husband meaner, more violent.

How she couldn’t escape, because where would she go? To whom could she turn? No parents, no siblings, all her friends long gone.

It wasn’t until now, until there were two lives to think about, that she’d been able to gather the courage to leave, to plan and to save and to escape.

Gail listens to it all, her heart breaking that the world could let such things happen to a woman so kind, so gentle, so innocent.

“Okay,” she tells Holly, “here’s what we’re going to do–”

* * *

By the time Holly and her son are ready to be discharged, everything is ready.

Gail, through her boss Randy, the local sheriff, has had a restraining order issued to Holly’s husband, and Gail herself has put up the retainer for the best divorce lawyer she can find in Toronto, where Holly and her husband had lived.

A battered women’s group has put together a new identity for Holly in the meantime, and made living arrangements for her and her son, delivering a big box of clothes and baby supplies to the hospital earlier that morning.

Now Gail, who’s been a frequent visitor to the hospital over the past week, has arrived to take them to their new, albeit temporary, home.

“Hey,” she says, knocking on the doorframe of the room, “you guys ready?”

Holly looks up from where she’s sitting on the bed, baby wrapped up in a blanket in her arms, and her eyes have taken on that look of fear that always strikes at the center of Gail’s heart.

“It’s going to be okay,” she says quietly as she walks into the room, “I promise you, Holly. I won’t let anything happen to you and your kid–who still needs a name, by the way.”

The officer sits down on the bed slowly, always cautious not to move too quickly or touch the other woman without permission. But today, Holly initiates contact, leaning against Gail as she takes a big, shuddering breath.

“Okay, I’m ready,” she says, and stands to move over to the wheelchair the hospital insists she use on her way out.

“Wait,” Gail says, “you’ll need this,” and she reaches for the box she brought in with her.

It’s a jacket, not unlike the one she’d wrapped around Holly’s shoulders on the night they met, just without all the insignia.

“It’s cold outside,” the officer says, and helps Holly into it.

* * *

“Where are you taking us,” Holly asks from the backseat of Gail’s truck, her son safely tucked into the car-seat next to her.

“Well,” Gail says, and pulls onto a dirt road, “I offered to set you up with me. I’ve got plenty of room at my place. So until we find you your own place, or you get sick of me, you’ll be staying at Casa Peck.”

When Holly doesn’t say anything, Gail checks on her in the mirror.

“Holly? You okay back there?” she asks.

When she looks up to meet Gail’s eyes, there are tears falling down her cheeks.

“Why are you being so kind to me,” she asks, “you don’t even know me.”

Gail parks in front of a house at the end of the long dirt lane that Holly realizes is a driveway.

“Because,” she says, turning around to look at Holly in the back, “you’ve had some terrible things happen to you, but you didn’t let them beat you. You’re strong and you’re brave and you’re a fighter. I know what it feels like to think you’ve got nobody in your corner, and I want you to know that you have someone, you have me if you want me. As long as you need me, you’ve got me.”

It doesn’t stop Holly’s tears, but it makes her smile.

It’s a warm and gentle smile, and Gail promises herself that she’ll get Holly to smile like that every day from now on.

“Alright,” she says, “let’s get you and his highness inside. You know, this kid still needs a name, right?”

“I know,” Holly answers as she gingerly steps out of the car, still a little sore, “I thought about naming him after you because you saved us, but neither Gail or Peck really work as a good name for a boy.”

“True,” Gail agrees, looking down at the sweet face all wrapped up in layer after layer of blankets. She’s grown awful fond of him, and his mother, in just a short week’s time.

“Who’s your hero,” Holly asks as they walk up to Gail’s porch.

“My hero?”

“Well, I can’t name him after our hero, because of reasons already explained,” Holly says as she slowly climbs the steps, “so what about yours?”

Gail stops for a second, the question taking her aback.  Two years ago, the answer would have been simple. Her brother. The man she thought could never let her down.

Now, though, now she has to think.

“You ever read any Dashiell Hammett?” she asks, thinking about the book she was reading the night this woman drove into her life, and unlocks the door.

Holly hovers at the entrance, not quite ready to take the step inside, “Sam Spade, Nick and Nora, that Dashiell Hammett?”

But Gail just holds out her free hand, the one not carrying the car-seat, and waits for Holly to take that final leap of faith, to take her hand and cross the threshold.

“That’s the one,” she says, standing just inside the entrance.

They’re silent for a moment, Holly and Gail, and the unnamed baby in his carrier. Like they all know something beautiful, some bright new chapter of their lives, is just about to begin.

“Dash,” Holly says, trying the name out on her tongue, “I like the sound of it.”

And then with a deep breath, she takes the final step, pulling the door closed behind her.


	13. Sorry I'm Late

* * *

 

It starts with an apology.

An apology, a playful boast, and then, and then–

And then this, the press of skin against skin, the delightful pressure of warm and wet pleasure building, building into this place where air and time and thought cannot not exist.

Where there are only bodies.

And lips.

Hands and breasts and–oh, God–and tongues.

It starts with an apology.

It ends with something almost like a prayer.

~

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, babe,” the brunette calls up the stairs of the townhouse as she kicks her boots off into the direction of the closet, “I got caught up with a last-minute request from the Two-Seven, and then Rodney spilled a tray of dirt samples all over me, so I had to bag my clothes and then hit the decontamination shower and write up an incident report …”

From the top of the stairwell Holly can see the shaft of light spilling out from their spare room that’s become their home gym, and hear the mix of bass-heavy music and muffled grunts from within.

Quiet now, Holly tiptoes up to the door, not wanting to disturb her girlfriend, to ruin her chance to watch, to appreciate, the sight of Gail working out.

And there she is, in all her perfect, sweaty glory. Black boxer-briefs, a sports-bra to match. Her hair, grown-out again and a dirty-blonde, pulled up into a messy braid that swings back and forth along her shoulders as she moves.

It’s bag-day, and Gail attacks the heavy bag with abandon, her gloved hands flying furiously into her target. Holly watches the attack, recognizing the combinations as the blonde’s shoulders, back, legs all move in sync, muscles shifting and rolling smoothly under that pale skin, flushed just the slightest shade of pink as Gail huffs and puffs and throws herself into her workout.

And then she turns as the bag twists away from her after a particularly hard jab, and sees Holly standing there, watching her. The bag catches her off balance as it swings into her body, and Gail stumbles back, one step, two.

“Maybe you should fight someone your own size,” Holly teases and steps into the room.

Gail pants as she hugs the bag, a bright sheen of sweat covering her skin. “Oh, yeah,” she asks, “like you?” Her eyes glitter with the challenge, and there’s an amused grin on her face as she takes in the image of Holly before her.

Holly takes another step forward, hands toying with the drawstring of the scrub pants she dug up in the corner of her office closet. Already her heart is racing, already the heat building within her. The most beautiful woman in the world is standing before her, slick with sweat, and she’s Holly’s for the taking.

“You think I couldn’t take you down, Gail?” Holly asks, her voice low and throaty, and her girlfriend’s name almost a moan as she steps out of her pants.

The blonde doesn’t answer right away, but stands, silent, and swallows hard.

“I think you’d certainly give it a good try,” she throws back, and her grin is wicked.

Holly wants to kiss it away, hard and furious. Wants to slant her mouth over her lover’s and claim those lips, that smirk, for herself. Wants to bruise and bite, wants Gail to remember every time she speaks, every time she opens her mouth, who loves her, who marked her.

It’s not even need now, the fire that’s consuming the brunette, it’s more. It’s the stuff that stars are made of, universises and galaxies. It’s creation and it’s destruction and finally, finally, Holly understands how the two can be the same.

She crosses the room to where Gail is, where she stands licking her lips, and pushes the other woman back until there’s no where else to go. Until they reach the wall, and the blonde plants her hands flat, palms down, against the white walls for support.

“Oh,” Holly whispers, “I’ll give it more than a try,” and lowers her mouth over Gails, hovering just a breath away.

She’ll take, she’ll take and take and take until neither of them has anything left, until they’re ashes and embers and smoke, but only if Gail is willing to give.

Gail closes the distance between them, rakes her teeth over Holly’s lower lip, and it’s all the permission Holly needs.

She fists a hand in Gail’s braided hair, tugging just this side of gentle, tilting the blonde’s head up the slightest bit and exposing that long, sweet neck. And as she kisses Gail, as she licks and nips and tastes the wet paradise of Gail’s mouth, she caresses the smooth skin, the curve where shoulder meets throat, feels the delicate racing pulse under her thumb.

And when she’s drunk her fill of her lover’s mouth, when Gail’s lips are kiss-swollen, slowly, Holly begins her loving journey down.

She gives no thought to the paleness of the blonde’s skin, the ease with which it spills their secrets, not tonight.

Trailing her lips down, tasting the salt that’s dried on Gail’s tender skin, Holly marks as she pleases. Just under the hard line of the officer’s jaw, the sweet hollow of her throat, the scar along her collarbone. Holly knows them all by heart, these secret places, these landmarks on Gail’s body, and still, they’re as wondrous as the first night she explored them, the gentle light of the moon her only guide.

“Fuck,” Gail gasps as Holly licks alongside the damp fabric of her sports-bra, as she slips her tongue under the bra-strap, and the brunette pauses, smiles against her lover’s skin.

Just long enough for the blonde to remember, to remember that she, too, can make Holly gasp and moan and want.

She, too, can make Holly need, demand.

Gail brings her hands up to press against her partner’s shoulders, just a few steps, a surprised Holly inhaling sharply as she loses her place on the other woman’s body. And, then, taking advantage of the brunette’s slight loss of balance, her surprise, Gail hooks her ankle around Holly’s legs and pushes again.

They fall together, Gail quickly reaching to palm the back of Holly’s head, to protect the woman she loves as they tumble to the ground.

She laughs as Holly curses, realizing that their positions have been switched, that she’s lost her advantage.

“You tried,” Gail says, looking down at the woman beneath her. She’s sitting back on her knees in the open vee of Holly’s legs, her warm palms toying with the waistband of the brunette’s black panties.  

“Hmmmm,” Holly answers, reaching down for one of Gail’s hands to pull the younger woman forward, to pull Gail down on top of her, “I didn’t hear the bell.”

She kisses her again, slips her tongue into the blonde’s mouth and thrusts it, slow and deliberate, against Gail’s. It’s sweet in comparison to the fierce tangle of mouths and skin just a few moments ago, and Gail can feel herself melting into the woman beneath her, sinking deep into Holly’s warmth and love.

The slow and steady kisses weave a spell around the blonde, sweetly seducing her with their gentle, loving attention.

Time passes, but Gail takes no note of it. Just focuses on the feel of Holly’s skin against her own, the teasing tickle of those long, strong fingers slipping just inside the wide band of her briefs, cupping the firm curve of her ass.

Holly shifts beneath her and Gail gasps as a hard thigh parts her legs and presses insistently against her center. And she’s so wet, so slick. She knows her girlfriend can feel it. God, and the thought, the knowledge that Holly knows how turned on she is right now, knows that it’s all for her?

Gail feels a fresh charge of heat burn through her belly, and tilts her head back as she’s overcome with arousal.

She doesn’t even realize it’s happening, doesn’t even realize what’s happened until it’s over. Until she’s on her back, Holly straddling her hips and pinning her arms down above her head.

“Told you,” Holly says with as smirk that Gail would find probably find more attractive if she hadn’t just been bested.

Fuck it, even on her back, gently struggling against the brunette’s grip, Gail knows the truth.

It’s hot as all fuck.

“Now,” her girlfriend says, “let’s try this again.”

She lowers her mouth to hover over Gail’s chest again, just over the spot she’d been when the blonde took control, before moving lower to take the blonde’s hard, straining, covered nipple into her mouth.  Gail struggles to catch her breath, and doesn’t notice as Holly slowly brings a single hand down to skim along her ribs.

And then she feels those long, strong fingers pressing up against her clit, gliding through the slick arousal gathered there. Holly strokes the throbbing shaft firmly, and then moves lower, her thumb working wide circles around that sensitive bundle of nerves as she slips into Gail’s sex.

Hard, Holly thrusts into the blonde as she switches to Gail’s other breast, attends to the aching nipple there, and she can feel the ripple of her mouth against Gail’s breast in every sweet hug of the blonde’s muscles around her fingers.

Holly offers Gail no quarter. She takes and takes, demanding that Gail give. Demanding that Gail follow and bend to her demand.

And Gail gives in willingly. Gail lets herself be taken. Let’s Holly do with her what she will.

And it’s an odd kind of freedom she finds–she always finds–in letting Holly lead, in letting Holly take control.

Holly feels her lover’s desperation, feels the beautiful tension, the wire stretched to its limit, in Gail’s body. The brunette lets her lover’s breast go and slowly kisses her way back up Gail’s chest.

“Come for me,” she whispers into the blonde’s mouth, and lays her lips softly against Gail’s.

And not a moment later, not a second, she feels Gail’s release, the tell-tale quiver of limbs and the beautiful way the blonde holds her, tight, inside. The shaky “Oh, fuck, God,” that slips past her lips. The familiar slickness of Gail’s cum against her palm, and the breathless, blind way her lover returns her kisses.

Holly brings her down gently, kissing at the side of her mouth, and waits for Gail’s heart to settle, her breathing to slow.

“Oh, God,” the blonde says again, her whole body limp with pleasure and the most delicious feeling of exhaustion spreading through her limbs.

Holly just smiles down at her, “I do what I can.”


	14. Can I Have This Dance?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "[Coming Home](https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=94&v=MTrKkqE9p1o)" by Leon Bridges

_Baby, baby, baby_  
_I’m coming home_  
_To your tender sweet loving_  
_You’re my one and only woman_  
_The world leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, girl_  
_You’re the only one that I want_

_I wanna be around_  
_I wanna be around you girl_  
_I wanna be around girl_  
_I wanna be around_

* * *

The first wedding is a surprise. An unexpected phone call from an almost friend.

Sometimes–later–you wonder what would have happened if you’d said no. If you’d turned her down.

All the heartache you might have missed. All the joy. The quiet moments of love, the laughter and the tears. Every kiss, the soft ones, the sad ones, the ones that make your heart stop and the ones that set it beating again.

You’ll remember this moment for the rest of your life, even before you know how important it truly is–how this one night, this dance, drinks in your raised hand as you move around each other, not quite touching.

This night that will change everything.

* * *

_Baby, how I’d be grieving_  
_If you wanted to leave me all alone now_  
_By myself, I don’t want nobody else_  
_The world leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, girl_  
_You’re the only one that I want_

_I wanna be around_  
_I wanna be around you girl_  
_I wanna be around girl_  
_I wanna be around_

* * *

You see the pictures online, phantoms of the life, the people, you left behind.

Your friends, your old acquaintances, they all look happy, smiling faces open and easy with wine and love.

And you’re happy for them, all the people you said goodbye to, there dressed up in their suits and dresses, dancing under the sparkling lights. And you’re happy for Andy and for Sam, for the love they’ve found together, the ups and downs they’ve endured together.

You’re happy that despite everything, they’ve held on to each other, stuck with each other, committed to each other.

Some people, you know, don’t. Some people can’t.

Sometimes life just gets in the way, you think, scrolling through the pictures on your feed.

And if you see Gail, if your gaze always seems to zero in on a single face, her piercing blue eyes, the sadness she hides behind a scowling smile, you let it happen. You don’t force yourself to look away.

And if there’s an ache in your chest, deep inside your heart, a pang of regret for what could have been, you let it be.

The hurt reminds you it was real.

* * *

_Baby, baby, baby_  
_I’m coming home_  
_To your tender loving_  
_You’re my one and only woman_  
_The world leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, girl_  
_You’re the only one that I want_

_I wanna be around_  
_I wanna be around you girl_  
_I wanna be around girl_  
_I wanna be around_

* * *

The invitation is elegant. Cream and forest green, the script open and flowing.

_Mr. Oliver Shaw and Miss Celery Gibbs request the honor of your presence …_

You go because he was always kind to you. Because he was always kind to Gail.

You go because you remember the smile in his eyes at The Penny, the nod of approval when Gail introduced you as her girlfriend the first time.

You go because you know she’ll be there too.

You go because you can’t do anything else.

* * *

_I need you baby_  
_Girl I, I need your loving_  
_Darling, wanna hold you close_  
_Girl, girl_

* * *

The sun has all but faded into the west when she finds you, standing out on the balcony, sending out a promise on the biggest star in the sky.

“There you are,” she says, and you can hear the smile, the love, in her voice, layered under the faux annoyance, the smirking tone. “Elaine’s been looking for us.”

When you turn, you feel your heart hitch. You feel the sight of her steal away your breath, again, as she’s been doing all day. As she’s been doing since the moment you turned at the other end of the hall and saw her, on Oliver’s arm, walking toward you.

She’s a vision in white satin, the fabric draped across her beautiful frame, hugging her curves just right.

And her hair, long again, and up, falling in soft, sweet curls around her face.

She’s everything you’ve ever dreamed of, and the one thing you thought you could never have. Not after what had happened, the time lost between you.

But here she is now, standing before you, hands tugging at the pointed ends of your vest. And if there were a way to bottle this moment, to capture it forever, to never leave it, you would.

You would.

Still. Even though you know parts of the day will slip away into your lost memories, you know the important parts will never leave you.

How she looked walking toward you, the way her voice trembled as she said your name, as she promised her love for you is never-ending, the feel of her lips against yours as the small crowd behind you cheers and claps and hoots. The ride to the reception, the limo her mother had rented, how she sat in your lap and covered your neck in desperate kisses as she keened and moaned and rode the fingers you’d slipped under her dress and into her warm, wet sex. Even the dinner, the way her hand kept slipping into your own, and how you could feel the warm band of metal on her finger, a constant overwhelming reminder that she’d promised herself to you, and you to her, and that you belonged to each other, for the rest of your lives.

“And what does your mother want,” you ask as she pulls you closer, as she presses those lips, bright red, against the side of your mouth, nibbling at the corner of your lip while she slides her hands around to play at the small of your back.

You find your favorite spot on her neck, just under the shadow of her jaw, and lick at the salty skin there, her soft moan echoing through your blood, straight to your sex.

“It’s time–fuck,” she moans again, and you watch as her eyes shutter closed in the dim light of the balcony, “she wants … the dance. It’s time for the dance.”

“Hmmmm,” you say, and kiss her, feeling the way messy way she responds, like she’s already hovering just along the limits of her control, “we should go then, dance.”

When you pull back, take a step back into the railing behind you, her hips follow, unwilling to lose contact, but you spin and take her hand in yours.

“May I have this dance, Mrs. Stewart,” you ask, teasingly, lovingly, as you pull her slowly back into the party, to the dance floor behind.

She doesn’t respond. Just squeezes your hand and smiles.


	15. I Made Your Favorite

It started with a body in the woods.

A rainy morning. A slippery hill.

An officer with a quick and sharp tongue.

It wasn’t until the next day, after the body had been identified and the case solved, that Rodney pulled her aside and asked what it was like working with the Ice Queen, the Black Widow.

“What are you talking about,” Holly asked in confusion as she set up to start an autopsy on a body brought in over night.

Rodney looked up from where he was digging for a new box of gloves in the supply closet.

“Officer Epstein, you worked with her yesterday,” he said, “she’s the one whose husband was killed in that robbery last year? Unarmed kid holds up store, cop happened to be there, owner with nervous trigger finger pulls gun? I think it was right around the time you started?”

And that did it, spurred her memory.

“Oh, I remember now,” she answered, “it was a bit of a scandal since the kid wasn’t armed, right? Department ended up having to pay out a settlement to the family? That’s the officer’s wife? Gail Epstein?”

Her assistant nodded as he started to unzip the bodybag.

“Yeah, that’s her. She was always pretty icy, but after the suit against the department she took a lot of shit,” he told her, “doesn’t really talk to anyone unless she has to. And when she has to, she can be kind of a bitch. Only really interacts with the 15. I mean, she’s blue through and through–she’s a Peck, you know–but nobody’s ever really had her back since her husband died. And there weren’t many before either.”

—–

After hearing the story, Holly made a point of talking to Gail every time their paths crossed. Saying hello, asking how she was, casual. Conversational.

Talking turned to coffee. Turned to friendly plus-ones at a colleague’s funeral.

To movies and dinners and even a baseball game, once, when Gail couldn’t think of an excuse fast enough to get out of going.

Holly told Gail all about her attempt to join a sorority, the absolute last time she tried to follow in her older sister’s footsteps, and that one weekend in Cabo with the first girl she loved.

And Gail, slowly, cautiously, like she’d never had a friend before in her life, started to share in return. Stories of her childhood, her older brother, all their youthful antics. Anecdotes about her parents and their jobs, all the events she’d been dragged to as a child, how they’d only agreed to pay for college if she’d agreed to major in Criminology and apply to the police academy afterward.

Eventually, she even to tell Holly stories about her marriage. About Dov’s first drugged confession of love, how one night she’d decided to give him a chance, the night he’d gotten down on one knee and asked her to marry him. Bits and pieces of the year-and-a-half they’d been married. The time he’d surprised her in the shower and gotten a black eye to show for it, their first anniversary and the cottage he’d rented by the lake, their last words the morning he’d died, yelling at him for his inability to remember how she liked her coffee. How stupid it seemed now, to be angry over something so small. So unimportant.

But never further. Never what happened next. Never his death.

It was the one moment they never touched. The one forbidden topic. Too sacred or too somber to broach.

—–

It was a rare day when Gail didn’t pop into the lab at some point. Coffee early in the morning. Lunch if she got a chance to swing through. Dinner on those nights that Holly was stuck working late. In the year since Holly’d made a deliberate effort to befriend the younger woman, the officer had become a familiar sight, enough that the interns no longer whispered and the techs had stopped staring.

Still, though, around most everyone they encountered, every man or woman in uniform, the blonde bristled with hostility. And Holly could see how she’d earned her “Ice Queen” nickname–the officer’s icy stare and cold shoulder were impressive, to say the least.

But underneath it all, there was a woman raw and bleeding.

How no one else could see it, Holly had no idea. It was so plain to her, Gail’s soft and sweet heart, the wounds left by those who resented the effect her husband’s last deed had on the department, the layoffs and budget cuts and slashed benefits.

Not everyone blamed her, Holly’d learned. There were some still on Gail’s side. Officer Shaw, Diaz and Collins, Andy and the new transfer from 27, Pierce. They were all friendly enough, at least when Gail let them get close enough to try.

But still, the only person she seemed to truly not hate, truly not detest spending time with, was Holly.

—–

It was a lost cause long before Holly even realized she had a problem.

One morning just like a hundred others. Waking up half-sprawled across her bed, arching her back as the last sweet pictures of her dream sparked across her eyes. Gail, those hot blue irises, that bright blonde hair falling over her own face, tickling at her nose.

She could feel her, feel the way Gail’s weight settled atop her hips, like she was always meant to be there, with her. She could feel the teasing nips of Gail’s lips on her skin, along the curve of her breasts.

As her breath slowed, as her heart resumed its usual steady rhythm, Holly felt the shame slip quickly through her body, along her still-buzzing nerves and her hot, hot blood.

But it was more than the dream–which happened again, and again, and again, until Holly could barely think about her best friend without blushing.

It was the way the blonde was always, always on her mind. The warmth she brought to Holly’s life, the comfort.

It was the way seeing Gail had become the brightest part of Holly’s day, the thing she looked forward to more than any other.

She wasn’t falling.

Not anymore.

She’d fallen. She’d landed.

She was, without a doubt, in love with her best friend.

And she had no idea what to do about it.

—–

“Do you still love him,” Holly asked late one night, too drunk to stop herself.

It had been a long day, multiple bodies, hours and hours spent standing over a corpse, poking and prodding and trying to figure out what had happened, what had brought the two young men into her life, to her table.

In the end, it was tragic.

A suicide pact.

Gail’d been the one to tell her about the note, the anger and the angst in the boys’ writing. Their pain made plain on the page.

It’d been love that did it, ended their young lives. A love that their parents didn’t understand, that their culture, their religion, didn’t approve of.

Convinced that they were wrong, that they had no other choice, they’d killed themselves. A tragic romance, Romeo and Romeo, Gail’d told her.

She’d shown up at Holly’s door later that night, a bottle of tequila and a couple of bags of take-out Thai. She’d known how hard Holly would take it, how close to the bone it had cut. And as Holly had done so often for her, Gail’d come over to comfort, to soothe. To be the rock her friend needed.

—–

Now, half into the bottle, her tongue feels thick in her mouth and she can barely keep her head up for all the thoughts weighing it down.

But there’s something in her, something that needs to know.

“Are you still in love with him,” she asks again, eyes closed so she won’t have to see Gail’s face when she answers.

It takes a moment, an awkward second or two, before the blonde answers.

“Honestly,” Gail starts, and her voice is soft, like she’s not entirely certain she wants to be heard, “I don’t know. He loved me though. He loved me and I guess I thought that could be enough.”

The words fade off into the night, disappearing under the sound of the movie they’d been watching, and Holly thinks the blonde’s finished talking. Until she hears the hitch of breath from the other end of the couch.

“I think he knew, you know, that he loved me more than I could love him, than I’d ever love him. He had this whole idea in his head. Us and Christmas and kids. But I think he was just starting to realize that it was never going to work, you know? And then he died and it didn’t matter after that. There were no more arguments about when we’d start having kids or what kind of toilet paper to buy or why I wouldn’t let my Peck connections interfere with our jobs. One morning I was Dov Epstein’s wife and working my way toward miserable, and the next I was his widow and honestly, Holly, I was relieved.”

There are no tears. It might have been easier to hear if there were.

But not Gail. Not Gail Epstein or Gail Peck or even just Gail, the woman who stole the covers and snored and took unapologetically long showers that filled the entire house with steam when she finally came out.

There was just grief and regret, and cold, unforgiving honesty, the only kind Gail knew.

“When Ollie told me what happened, the first thought I had was that at least I wouldn’t have to disappoint him again, at least I wouldn’t have to look at his face when I told him I wanted a divorce. I mean, how cruel is that, Holly? What kind of person thinks that?”

And then Holly understands. Why Gail doesn’t fight back when her colleagues call her “Ice Queen,” or “Black Widow.” Why she doesn’t report them for harassment when they say cruel things about Dov, about his mistake.

“Gail,” Holly says, scooting over to close the small distance between them on the couch, “that’s not true. You know that’s not true.”

Maybe the words are slurred, and maybe the arm she throws over the blonde’s shoulder is a little heavy, her body loose from the tequila they’d drunk, but everything she says she means. From the bottom of her heart, from every corner, every beautiful memory she has of Gail’s sweetness, her kindness, her capacity to love.

“Gail, honey,” she says again, and leans her head into the blonde’s, “you are not cruel. You are not cold or dark. You are gentle and you are kind. You loved Dov as much as you could, I know this. And maybe it wasn’t going to last, but that’s not less his fault than yours.”

Holly pulls Gail in closer, lips brushing against the younger woman’s cheek. And she can taste the wetness there, the dam that has finally burst.

—–

She doesn’t remember when they went to bed. Or even how they got there.

The last clear memory Holly has of the night before is the shuddering weight of Gail in her arms, her soft cries in the quiet room.

But when she wakes, she’s wrapped around the blonde, holding Gail tight to her own body, close enough to feel the way the muscles of her back move with every breath.   
Slowly, carefully, she untangles herself from the sleeping woman, pressing a soft kiss to the back of Gail’s head as she slips out of the bed.

Holly feels better after a hot shower. Better enough to make her way to the kitchen, blinking away the bright morning sun, and get a pot of coffee started.

By the time Gail stumbles into the kitchen, almost an hour after Holly’d left her asleep in bed, there’s a carafe full of hot coffee on the table, and a batch of waffles in the oven to keep warm.  

“Sit,” Holly says with a smile, and pours the squinting woman a cup of steaming coffee, leaving it black, just the way she knows Gail likes.

The sound the blonde makes as she takes her first sip, what it does to Holly’s belly, her heart?

It should be illegal.

“Here, get started on these,” the doctor tells Gail as she places the warm plate of waffles on the table, “and the bacon’ll be ready any minute.”

“Chocolate chip,” Holly hears from behind her as she checks to see if the bacon’s crispy enough yet, “my favorite.”

And even though she can’t see it, Holly knows the blonde is smiling. 


	16. It's Okay, I Couldn't Sleep Anyway

You wake in a suffocating darkness, the weight of so much nothing pressing heavy over your chest, into your lungs.

You can’t breathe, can’t quite draw in a breath to ease the burning in your lungs but, even if you could, you’d just waste it on the scream caught in your throat, clawing for its release.

Slowly, slowly, your eyes adjust.

Enough to see the lampshade just at your side, the fluttering curtains in the night breeze. Enough to recognize the shape of the bureau in the corner, the form of your hand in front of your face.

_You are safe._

_You are safe._

_You are safe._

There is no monster standing over you tonight, no demon but your memories, hazy and drug-clouded.

And finally, you can breathe. Fill your lungs with air, scream suffocated into a weak whimper that feeds the sense of shame nights like these always leave you with.

_In and out_ , you think, simply focusing on the smallest of skills right now.

Breathing first.

And then, maybe, settling your racing heart.

You hate nights like these. Reminders of how weak you are, how vulnerable. How deeply one man has embedded himself in your life, upon your body, your mind.

The therapist said it was normal to feel this way, to be changed by what had happened to you.

You stopped going after that.

You don’t want any part of this kind of normal.

You want your life back.

You want to not be haunted by the sound of hard-soled shoes on cement. You want to be able to tangle in the sheets in the middle of the night and not wake up terrified that you’ve been tied down again, paralyzed, helpless to fight back. You want to forget the sharp pinch of a cold needle in your flesh, the cool burn of a drug in your veins, clouding your thoughts, your eyes.

You want to not be a victim anymore.

Because that’s how you feel now.

Like a victim.

And there it is, the panic building again. The icy burn of it as it recaptures your heart, as it crawls along your skin.

And there’s only one thing that can make it better, can help you find yourself again. Only one person who can help you remember that you are more than dark and broken. That there is light inside of you still. That you are more than what was done to you, so much more.

You’re dialing her number before you remember that you shouldn’t. That you can’t anymore. Before you remember the things that went wrong and the parts of your heart that she took with her when she left.

But then there’s that voice on the other end of the line, and for a minute, you let yourself forget.

“Gail, honey,” she says, her voice thick, and you know immediately that you woke her, that she was just on the edge of slipping into a deep sleep. “Gail,” Holly repeats, “sweetie, what’s wrong?”

And you should say something, anything. You should apologize for waking her, tell her you’re sorry for everything, let her hang up and get back to her bed, her life. Let her move on.

But her voice was the one to soothe you back to sleep for months when the nightmares were at their worst. Her voice and her touch and the simple pleasure of her body heat against you, grounding you. Reminding you that she was there, and he was not.

And you know that if you speak, you’ll ruin it, you’ll say the wrong thing–you always do.

So you’re silent.

You let your breath speak for you–in, out, in, out–and trust that she can translate the message.

She does.

“So this morning my new intern dropped a liver on his shoes …” she says. And she begins to tell you all about her day, her job, her new life in San Francisco.

It’s exactly what you need. A tether to bring you back, or a lightning rod, and you the storm.

And soon enough, you’re laughing at a joke, and the darkness sinks back into your bones to sleep again. It’s not gone, you know, it never is, but it’s been tamed into submission by Holly’s gentle voice, the soft rise and fall of her stories.

“… the bridge at its most beautiful, right as the sun sets off in the distance.”

Your breathing is even, and your whole body feels relaxed. You could slip off into sleep right now, just listening to her talk.

“Holly,” you whisper into the phone, into the empty space of the bed, the room, your life, “I’m sorry I woke you.”

It’s the most you can say, the closest you can get to what you mean.

_Thank you._

_Thank you. You saved me again._

_You’re always saving me._

_Thank you._

There’s a pause on the other end of the line, a hitch in her breath.

“Don’t worry about it, I wasn’t sleeping,” she lies, and you smile in your dark room.

She’s always known how to read between your lines.

 


	17. Watch Your Step

The desert stretches on, this endless canvas of yellows and browns. An ocean of sand and rock more infinite than the night sky, and certainly more empty.

Still, though, it’s calming. Like watching the sea, the waves rolling in, and out, and in again. It’s a comfort. To look out into that dry sea and know that there’s something bigger, something permanent.

Something more grunts and guns and that grit that no length of shower can seem to wash away from her skin.

Something that will exist long after this war has been forgotten, long after her bones have turned to dust.

Some mornings she can watch the sun as it moves across the sand and forget, for a breath, for a heartbeat, everything else.

But eventually, the world comes rushing back in. The sounds of the camp behind her, shaking off the heat of the noonday sun, a shot in the distance–or, on the bad days, a blast.

“Peck!”

Today it’s her name, her buddy shouting after her from the motorpool. Another convoy ready to roll out, another zone to patrol, to clear. Some intel that needs to be verified, maybe, or a suspected insurgent to be rounded up and brought in.

The objective doesn’t matter. It’s all really the same.

Hours in the hot, stale air of the humvee. Soldiers cracking terrible jokes behind as they slowly inch forward, already tired of whatever’s holding up the line today.

The kids in the back will be that combination of nervous and overeager, fingers playing along the long lines of their guns, tapping at their thighs. They talk of conquests, and sometimes with the words they use it isn’t clear whether they mean in love or war.

_If you’re lucky_ , Gail wants to tell them, _you won’t ever learn that newness is a sheen only blood can wash away._

_If you’re lucky, you’ll never see the eyes of the enemy looking down at you through your scope, or stumble over him in the aftermath, the hole you put into him gaping back up at you._

_If you’re lucky,_  she wants to tell them,  _you’ll survive._

_If you’re lucky, you won’t get any of us killed._

But she holds her tongue, swinging her body up into the front seat as Mack settles in beside her. They’ll learn it all soon enough.

None of them are lucky.

Not here.

—–

“So, Peck,” Mack shouts over the loud engine as they crawl along the sandy road, “saw you got some mail the other day. Doctor Sexy write you again? You finally gonna share some of them pics?”

She laughs and slaps at his arm.

“Not with the likes of you, no fucking way,” Gail shouts back. “You wouldn’t even know what to do with them if I did. And her name is Holly, asshole.”

He just laughs in return, grinning back at her from the passenger seat.

One of the privates in the back lifts his head.

“Hey,” he says–Miller, maybe, or Michaels, she hasn’t bothered to learn their names yet–“you got a hottie sending you naked pictures? That’s pretty fucking–”

“–I hear one word that can be construed as anything other than complimentary, Marks, you can expect your name to come up every time our squad get latrine duty for the whole rest of your tour.” The look on Mack’s face is stern and uncompromising.

The kid never finishes his sentence.

When the convoy slows to a standstill just a minute later, Gail looks back at him and smirks. His eyes are wide under his helmet, and his skin has gone a little pale, a stark contrast to the smudges of dirt that mar his face.

“Eh, let him be, Mack,” she says, taking pity on the boy who can’t be more than nineteen, “he looks like he’s about to wet himself.”

And then she turns.

“Yes, kid,” she tells him, “I’ve got a hottie doctor sending me pictures. Usually of our dog. Or my nephew. Sometimes the backyard if the garden is looking particularly good. I know lesbian porn has given you unrealistic expectations of what kind of relationship two women have, but let me tell you, for the most part, it’s pretty PG.”

His friend sniggers in the seat next to him, and she gives them both her wickedest grin.

“And,” Gail continues, “as for the parts that aren’t? I don’t need any visual inspiration–I’ve got a pretty fucking good memory.”

Mack guffaws, unable to stop himself, as the boys in the back squirm under her gaze.

And when she turns back around, settles into her seat again, the truck in front is just starting to move.

“Alright, troops,” Mack says, “you know the drill. Eyes wide.”

The radio crackles, and for now, at least, they’re back to work.

—–

You never expect it, the sudden noise, the flames, the black plume of smoke.

No one ever expects it.

In an instant everyone slips into their roles, Mack shouting orders into the radio, the boys in back alert and scouting the immediate area even from the limited view the back seat of the humvee affords.

The truck in front of them is on fire, the smoke already thick enough to compromise their field of vision.

They still don’t know what happened. 

_Is the lead truck intact? Did the one in front of them hit an IED? Was there an RPG? Will there be another one?_

“–……..,” she sees Mack open his mouth and say something, but the ringing in her ears is too loud. She can’t hear anything over it.

Gail shakes her head, again, and again, and then the voices, the radio, the fear, it all comes back. She can hear it all.

“–establish a perimeter,” Mack shouts and jerks his thumb to indicate that they’re all getting out of the vehicle, “let’s go!”

—–

The heat outside is intense, desert sun beating down on them from above and the fire from two vehicles at their backs.

Gail can see now, how it happened. It was the lead truck, an IED–she recognizes the pattern, the twisted, burning metal where there’d been a driver’s seat, just like hers. It’s all gone now, all of it, all of the soldiers in it. Nothing she can do for them now.

She knows, she always knows when they go out, that this can happen. Knows that any day it could be her whose luck has run out.

But she can’t think about it. Not ever. Not now.

“Hey,” she takes up her position at the front of the burning wreck–Mack behind her, to the right, new kid helping to pull a wounded Marine out of the second vehicle–and thumbs off the safety of her gun, “careful where you step, watch for signs of secondary devices.”

She won’t remember saying it later, won’t remember catching Mack out of the corner of her eye as he crouched down to gently lift a piece of debris–not debris, remains–from the sand.

She won’t remember the second explosion, the burning pain. The kid’s face above hers, frightened and frantic, lips moving but no sound over the roaring in her ears–blood, maybe, or flames.

What she’ll remember is the sand, the sun. Yellow and brown and red red red.

—–

_Bits and pieces, moments of awareness._

_The_  thump-thump-thump _of a chopper._

_Cool, cool air on her face, something wet._

_Green masks, bright lights._

_And then everywhere black, a darkness empty and vast._

—–

“Hey, there, blue eyes.”

A dream then. Holly’s voice at her ear, whispering to wake her. A dream, or a memory. Some early morning moment, her sweet girl enticing her awake, creating a few more minutes for them to spend together.

“No, no, don’t fall back asleep, Gail, stay with me, open those eyes again.”

She sounds sad, Gail thinks, or … or scared.

“Come on, baby,” Holly’s voice whispers, and she can feel a soft hand against her face, pulling her out of the fog, the pleasant cloud she’s been floating in.

And when she opens her eyes, when she blinks–once, twice–to clear the heaviness of sleep away, Holly is there, right at her side, eyes tired and rimmed with red, but smiling, smiling, smiling.

“That’s my good girl,” Holly whispers, and then leans in to kiss tenderly at the corner of Gail’s mouth.

—–

_Mack is dead_ , the kid tells her, his face swathed in bandages and arm bound up in a sling.

“He stepped on a pressure plate, set off a smaller IED. Took him out, but no fatalties beyond the guys in the first truck, a LT in the second, and him.”

The kid looks older now–he’s lost that innocent gleam, that shine. His eyes are tired and there’s a heavy weight settled over his shoulders, bowing his back just in the slightest. And though she wants to cry and yell and grieve, Gail resists. It’s not what he needs right now.

“You did good, Marks,” she tells him, and watches something brighten in his eyes, “you did your job. Shit happens. Mack knew that better than anybody.”

He stays a little longer, out of politeness mostly. But they talk about the people they are when they’re not in uniform, when they’re not at war.

“I–,” he starts to say something and blushes, “uh, I met your girlfriend. Doctor Holly. She’s really something. I’m glad you have her.”

And Gail knows then, he’s a man now. Not the kid who sat in the back of her truck, hoping for a fight. Not the boy who cast her into an adolescent fantasy, just for a moment.

When he goes home–when, always when–he’ll shake his father’s hand and help his mother with the dishes. He’ll sit quietly and watch the birds chase each other around the backyard. And if he’s lucky, if he’s very lucky, he’ll sleep without dreams.

“Yeah,” she answers, feeling the edge of the pain again, drugs starting to wear off, “me too.”

And when he leaves, he gives her a nod, a grin, and she knows: he’ll be okay.

—–

There’s another flight, and another hospital.

Surgery after surgery. Steps forward, steps back.

And then months, and months, and months of rehab.

But then one day, almost a year later, her bags are packed, and Holly’s pulling the car around to meet her at the front of the hospital.

She’s never been one for hugs, for public affection, but the nurses, the doctors, the techs and therapists, they’re more than brothers- and sisters-in-arms now. They’re family. They’ve wiped her tears and held her hand. They’ve pushed her and pulled her and dragged her into recovery, and fought with her the entire way.

Gail hugs them each as they bend down over her, and means each heartfelt “thank you” that she gives in return.

And then it’s time to leave.

She holds on tight to Holly’s arm as she slowly rises from the wheelchair, still a little off-balance. But with each step away from the wheelchair, from the hospital, from the year of pain and struggle and grief, she feels more confident, more sure of herself, of her body.

“I’ve got it,” Gail says, and lets her grip on Holly’s arm loosen.

Holly, for her part, tries not to hover, tries not to take her love’s arm back, to help her cross those final few steps to the car.

This, she knows, is something Gail has to do on her own.

But still, she worries.

“Be careful,” Holly says softly, “watch your step.”

And when Gail reaches the open door, settles herself into the waiting passenger seat, Holly feels the weight she’s been carrying for months get a little lighter.

She wipes a tear away, and another, before waving a final goodbye to the place they’ve called home for far too long.

“Okay,” she says, and slips into the driver’s seat next to Gail, “let’s do this.”


	18. Here, Drink This, You'll Feel Better

“Nerd?” Holly hears Gail whisper from the doorway, “I got your message. How bad is it?”

But the brunette can’t answer, the pain is too great.

Gail knows, though. They’ve been married long enough that she’s nursed Holly through more than a few migraines.

No light. No loud noises. No smells that would turn her stomach.

Just darkness and silence and Gail’s gentle, calming presence.

“Okay, babe,” Gail says so softly, coming to kneel next to Holly’s head, “here’s the plan. I’ve got your sunglasses, and your noise-cancelling headphones right here. The car’s just outside the ambulance bay. We’ll get you home, okay?”

The blonde takes one of Holly’s hands in her own and gently, gently tugs. Until with a soft, slow moan, Holly moves herself into a sitting position.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers into her wife’s neck as Gail helps her into a jacket, winds a fleecy scarf around the brunette’s neck.

But Gail shakes her head as they stand together, and wraps her arm around Holly’s waist.

“Nope, no apologies, Lunchbox. Not unless it’s for eating my Thai leftovers in the middle of the night this weekend.”

Despite the pain in her head, the way it radiates down her neck, into her shoulders and arms and chest, despite the way echoes in her head like fireworks, Holly gives a small, quiet laugh.

~ - ~

At home, Gail’s pulled down the blackout blinds that cover their bedroom windows. The temperature in the room is cool, but not cold, and thick fleece blanket that’s normally folded at the foot of the bed is spread across their thick duvet.

Holly’s work clothes are piled in a corner, and she’s pulling a long-sleeved t-shirt over her head, well-loved and baby-soft from thousands of cycles in the washer. And when Gail comes up the stairs and into the room, her wife’s just sliding under the blanket on the bed.

“Holly, babe,” the blonde whispers, and though there’s worry in her eyes, her voice is steady, well-used to the routine of nursing her wife through a migraine episode.

“Here,” she says, coming to sit on the edge of the bed, “you need to drink something before I give you the shot, okay?”

There’s a warm mug of tea on the bedside table, and Holly reaches over for it with a trembling hand, Gail reaching out to help her steady it, to help guide it to her mouth.

The tea isn’t anything special, just Sleepytime. Something to help the brunette relax, to soothe her to sleep. Something they discovered Holly could keep down during those episodes when the nausea got to be too much.

When she’s finished, Holly presses the mug back into the blonde’s hand, and carefully lowers herself back down to lay on the bed.

“You ready, Hol,” Gail asks quietly, and nods her head when she feels her wife squeeze her hand.

And then the officer shifts, moving down the bed to sit at Holly’s legs. She slowly slides her wife’s sweatpants down to expose the soft, tan skin at Holly’s hip.

“Okay, on three,” she tells the doctor, one hand holding her wife’s as she expertly loads the injection pen with the other.

“One.”

Holly’s eyes close.

“Two.”

She squeezes hard at the blonde’s hand.

“Three.”

Gail carefully, carefully presses the pen down against the strong muscle of her wife’s thigh.

The brunette gasps at the sharp pinch–she always gasps–and then sighs.

“It’s okay, honey,” Gail whispers, gently rubbing her thumb over the injection site before she pulls the sweats back up over her wife’s hip, “it’s okay. It’ll get better soon.”

She reaches over to press a button on the white noise machine on the lower shelf of the nightstand, and the room fills with the slow, slow sound of waves lapping at a sandy shore.

And then Gail pulls the thick blanket up to cover Holly, and moves to sit up at the head of the bed with her wife, tenderly brushing a wisp of hair away from those dark brown eyes as she watches them grow ever more hazy and unfocused.

“It’s okay, love,” she whispers as the steady rise and fall of Holly’s chest slows and slows, “just sleep.”


	19. Can I Hold Your Hand?

For a doctor, Holly has an unexpected dislike of hospitals. Too much time spent in them as a kid, maybe. Too many relatives lost too soon, a particularly bad case of bronchitis that developed into pneumonia when she was seven.

Aside from med school–and that was different, she was a white coat, not a patient, not a family member–she tends to avoid them whenever she can.

And yet. Twice now in the short span of time she’s known Officer Peck–Gail–she’s found herself in Emergency Room waiting areas.

The first time was an accident on the job, a chemical spill that burned Gail’s delicate skin. She remembers getting the call, the flurry of worry that fluttered through her belly when the nurse explained who she was, why she was calling. It hadn’t been serious, not really, Gail’s injury. But the fear Holly had to swallow back down had been, the fear that the blonde had been seriously hurt, that her life was hanging in that terrifying midpoint between the light and the dark.

—–

“You want to talk about it,” Holly asked as she pulled out of the hospital’s parking garage, chancing a look over at the woman to her side as she slowed to let a nurse cross in front of the car.

Gail’d reclined the passenger seat and balled a sweatshirt from the backseat up as a pillow for her head. She was high on the final dose of Oxy the doctor had given her right before her discharge, eyes wide and glassy, and head lolling around lazily, like it wasn’t fully attached to the rest of her body.

“He didn’t want me,” Gail said, words sliding into each other as she spoke, “I was stupid but he didn’t want me before either. Nobody wants me, not for always. Just long enough until …”

The brunette looked over again as she slowed to a stop at the intersection.

The blonde’s whole body was relaxed, her eyes closed as she continued mumbling.

It was an intimate moment, Gail at her most vulnerable, her most innocent and pure.

And it made Holly’s heart ache to witness.

“Gail,” she said, reaching out to caress the officer’s pale cheek.

But the light turned green, and Gail shifted in her sleep, and anything Holly might have said was lost.

—–

Holly realized something that night. The extent of her feelings for her friend, how decidedly un-friendly they were.

Friendship didn’t feel like she felt about Gail, the racing heart at the thought that something terrible might have happened to the other woman. Friendship didn’t feel like butterflies in her stomach every time the blonde sat just a little too close, or like electricity skittering along her skin when she caught the officer staring at her just a little too long.

Friendship didn’t include waking up, soaked in sweat and want as a pair of cool blue eyes and sweet red lips faded out of her mind’s eye.

That night, as she watched Gail toss and turn through the drug-induced nightmares that chased her unconsciousness, Holly realized something.

She didn’t want Gail to be her friend.

She wanted Gail to be so much more.

—–

Tonight there’s another phone call.

Gail’s voice, quiet and scared and so, so small.

“Holly,” she starts, and the doctor can hear everything, everything the other woman wants to say. The apology, the questions, the insecurity about who they were to each other yesterday, and who they are today.

But she can’t say it, Gail can’t say any of it. Not now, not like this.

“Can you come,” she asks, and in that moment, Death themself couldn’t stop Holly from going to her.

—–

There are things to say.

To discuss.

There are questions to be answered and promises to make. Apologies and forgiveness.

But right now, they sit, Gail straight-backed in her uncomfortable hospital chair and Holly, wanting to badly to offer her some relief, some comfort.

It’s been hours, and no one knows how many more they’ll have to wait.

“But,” Holly says quietly to the woman at her side, “it means Sam’s still alive, still fighting. And that’s a good sign.”

The blonde nods and apart her long-empty coffee cup with nervous hands.

“Hey,” Holly whispers to her, watching another piece of paper cup float to the ground, “will you hold my hand? Waiting rooms always make me nervous.”

And then slowly, tentatively, she feels Gail’s hand slip into her own, and when she gives a squeeze, the blonde returns it with a gentle smile.

“Thanks for coming, Hol,” she says softly, and maybe it’s her imagination, but it seems to Holly that the officer’s brow is just a little less furrowed with worry and fear.

The brunette waits for Gail to look up at her, to meet her eyes. And when she does, Holly speaks quietly, but deliberately.

“I will always come when you need me, Gail. I’ll always be here. For always.”

Gail looks at her, and her blue eyes go soft, and then watery before she shakes her head to stave off the tears gathering there. She meets Holly’s eyes again and nods solemnly, and the doctor knows that the other woman understands. That her message, her meaning, was received.

She will always be there for Gail.

For always.

Holly squeezes their joined hands again, and gives the blonde a small smile. It gets bigger, though, and brighter, as Gail leans into her, lays her head against the brunette’s shoulder and lets out a low, deep breath.

“I know,” Gail whispers, and lets herself relax against the other woman, “I know.”


	20. You Can Borrow Mine

“Hey, Hol?” Gail says as she holds the phone to her ear with her shoulder and ties her shoes.

She can tell from the slight echo, the way her girlfriend sounds far-off, that she’s on speakerphone. And the wet, squishy sounds she hears in the background–

“Holly, are your hands in some loser’s chest right now?”

And from the basement of the morgue, all the way across the city, Gail swears she can see the eyeroll that accompanies Holly’s loud sigh.

“Not a loser, hon, just a guy who got caught in the middle of a knife fight down by the docks,” Holly tells her girlfriend.

“What kind of idiot steps into a knife fight,” Gail asks back absently as she digs through the laundry basket again, emptying every pocket she could find.

“Someone trying to save a life, Gail, just a guy who tried to do something good. Hey, did you need something?” Holly asks, and from the loud wet sucking sound, the blonde can tell that she’s just removed some major organ–stomach, maybe, or intestines.

“Do you know where my iPod is? Ollie’s been harping on us about the fitness tests coming up next month–he promised that if we all passed he’d bring in doughnuts.”

Holly lists off a dozen or so places where she’s seen Gail’s iPod over the past few weeks, but the blonde’s already searched each of them. Some twice.

“Okay, well, why don’t you borrow mine, babe. It should be–”

“–Right where it always is, yeah, yeah,” Gail interrupts, “rub it in, nerd. You’re neat and tidy and you never lose anything. I guess I can put up with your terrible taste in music for one run at least.”

Holly laughs because she knows the truth–Gail’s iPod is full of a whole bunch of music she’d absolutely never admit to enjoying if anyone else ever found it. More than once Holly’s pretended to be the one who owns the Spice Girls, Kelly Clarkson, and Katy Perry cds that joined her Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, and B.B. King collection when Gail moved in.

“Okay,” Gail says from the other end, “I’ve got it, I’m going to go sweat to your oldies, babe. If I’m in the shower when you get home, you should definitely join me, you know, get clean together.”

And then she’s gone, and Holly just shakes her head and gets back to poor Mr. Daniels.

—–

When Holly checks her phone later, just before slipping on her coat and locking up her office, there’s several missed messages.

All from Gail, of course.

_// okay, nerd, we need to talk about this playlist on your ipod //_

_// title: booty call //_

_// contents: this is literally a sex playlist, nerd //_

_// why have you never shared your sex playlist with me //_

_// come home now //_

_// in shower //_

_// have plans to eat you out to track #3 //_

_// you can return favor at track #7 //_

_// definitely didn’t make it through my run but that’s okay //_

_// plan on getting plenty of cardio tonite //_

And if Holly speeds a little on the way home, well, she knows a few cops. 


	21. You Might Like This

The island is beautiful.

But she won’t truly appreciate it until she’s older, until the cabin with the dock and the porch swing are nothing but a cloudy memory. Until the island and the woods and the quiet trails are nothing but pictures in a dusty photo album.

When she’s there it’s nothing short of torture. A month hidden away in the woods with her family. Early morning reveille as Elaine yanks the covers away without ceremony, issuing the daily call–“Let’s go, Gail. Lots to do today. No more laying about.”

And then it was hours of calisthenics, survival training in the woods, competitions against Steve for who can swim the farthest, who can run the fastest, who can get closest to the center at the shooting range.

It’s summer vacation except it’s not a vacation. It’s an intense course in “How Not to Embarrass Your Parents When You Apply to the Police Academy” with advanced seminars in “The Art of Being a Peck” and Gail’s least favorite, “You’ll Have to Work Three Times as Hard as Your Male Colleagues.”

And, God, Gail hates it. She hates the early mornings and the early nights. She hates the fierce, desperate look on her mother’s face as she times a run, as she summarizes Gail’s progress–or lack thereof. As she frowns down at her disappointment of a daughter again with those “why did I get my expectations up” eyes.

It’s summer vacation and Gail wishes that they could do what other families do–enjoy it. Sit around the kitchen table late, late into the night playing Monopoly or Sorry! or any of the borrowed board games tucked away into the hallway closet. Or to wake late and eat a breakfast that bleeds into lunch, swim lazily in the afternoon sun, and spend the evening flicking peanut shells into the firepit behind the house.

She’d give anything to spend a day laughing with her family, making memories that feel good. To end a rainy evening tucked into her father’s side as he reads on the couch, listening to her brother pick out notes on the out-of-tune piano in the family room.

 _Just one day_ , she thinks to herself, _just one day to feel like it’s okay to just be me. To not have to try so hard to fit into what they want._

But every morning, more dedicated than the sun itself, Elaine pulls the blankets down to the foot of the bed and thrusts the day’s schedule into her daughter’s hands. And Gail sighs away her disappointment with bleary, blinking eyes.

~ * ~

She’s lost.

She’s lost.

She’s going to fail this exercise, just like she failed the last one. The test before that.

Just like she couldn’t swim the length of the pond in the time her father set.

Just like she couldn’t finish the obstacle course, tripping and falling over a root, cutting open her leg so that it bled–down, down, down–into her shoe, dyeing her white athletic sock red.

The sun is high in the sky, so Gail knows she’s been out for at least two or three hours now. Walking in the woods. A now empty bottle of water and a couple of granola bar wrappers in her backpack.

It’s hot, and it’s bright, and Gail has never felt more miserable.

Somewhere, she missed a turn. Or maybe counted wrong that morning, blindfolded in the backseat of the family car as Bill drove her and Steve to their drop-off points.

“It’s a test, Gail,” he said as she pleaded with him not to leave her stranded. “If you were paying attention as we drove here, you should be back to the cabin in no time. Besides, it could be worse, I could drive around in circles a few more times like I’ll be doing with your brother.”

And then he’d driven off. Leaving her alone in the early morning woods, the quiet, the cool, dewy air.

To be completely honest, she hadn’t been paying attention during the drive.

She could be four hundred feet from the cabin, or four miles. She has no idea. And one patch of the forest looks just the same as any other.

Somewhere, out in the distance, a bird shrieked in displeasure.

 _You said it_ , Gail thought to herself.

~ * ~

She’s been walking for at least an hour on the side of a road she stumbled across as she tried to find her way back home when she hears the car. A jeep comes rambling up the dirt and gravel road, and Gail looks at it miserably, waiting for it to pass as she stands off to the side.

But it doesn’t pass.

It stops.

“Hey,” a voice calls out, a red-headed woman maybe ten years younger than Elaine, “you lost?”

And for a moment, Gail hesitates.

Because she knows that if she accepts help, she’s breaking the rules. She’ll add another mark to that never-ending list of faults and sins that Elaine keeps in her head.

But it’s hot.

And it’s buggy.

And she’s been walking for hours.

And when she hops into the front passenger seat of the jeep, and feels the cool breeze on her face as they drive, Gail knows she’s made the right choice.

~ * ~

She sips from the ice cold can of Coke and watches the dragonflies dance in the air in front of her. The stranger–not a stranger now, but Michaela, an author slash recluse who lives year-round in a cabin on the other side of the lake from her own–had made them both big sandwiches and great big slices of cake for lunch.

It’s so pleasant and so relaxing, Gail feels truly happy for the first time she can remember this summer.

“So,” Michaela says softly, “how long do you want to stay before I take you home?”

And reality comes flooding back in.

Because she’s a Peck, and she had a Peck-mission to complete.

Because once again, she’s failed.

And the tears come, bitter and sour and stinging in her eyes.  

“Oh, honey,” the other woman says, putting down her glass of lemonade and coming to kneel before Gail’s Adirondack. “Don’t worry. I know who you are, and I know what you were doing out there. The whole island does. Most of us would throttle your parents if we got the chance.”

She lays a gentle hand on Gail’s knee and waits until Gail can look at her before continuing.

“What I meant was, how long do you want to stay here before I drive you back toward your parents’ cabin so you can pretend you were out walking back the whole time?”

Gail cries harder.

Because someone–someone understands.

Someone is finally, finally on her side.

“Can I stay just a little while longer,” she asks, and Michaela nods, a serious, careful look in her own eyes.

“Absolutely,” the author says, and nods firmly. “Do you like to read? Why don’t we look in my library to see if there’s a book you might like to read while we relax?”

Gail, a secret reader, under the covers with a flashlight long after Elaine’s official curfew, smiles shyly, and takes the older woman’s offered hand.

~ * ~

When it’s time to go, Michaela hands her a small stack of books, with tattered covers and dog-eared pages.

 _Trixie Belden and the Secret of the Mansion_  is the title of the one on top.

“My grandmother gave these to my mother,” she tells Gail, “and my mother gave them to me. I think they jumpstarted my desire to become a writer, honestly. I wanted to write something that people would love as much as I loved Trixie Belden.”

She looks up at the older woman, unsure of what do or say. Her heart is overwhelmed with this stranger’s kindness, her understanding. She has no experience with this kind of honesty, this kind of generosity.

Instead, she just hugs the other woman tightly

It’s enough.

~ * ~

She arrives home just before dark after a half-hour of killing time just beyond the familiar woods behind her cabin.

She arrives before Steve and, for the first time all summer, Elaine looks proud of her.

Maybe that should sting, Gail thinks later as she’s hiding under her covers, flashlight bright under the sheets, devouring the first of her new books.

But after her afternoon, after finding someone, some guardian angel maybe, who understood? Who was nice and kind and let Gail be herself?

Elaine’s approval feels a little less essential now.

Gail feels like she’s learned something about surviving. Not the lesson her mother wanted her to learn, but something more important, something a little more true.

~~ ** ~~

It’s been twenty years since she last stepped foot on this island, and for a moment, Gail feels small, invisible. Like the little girl lost in the woods again.

But then Holly steps off the ferry behind her, and she smiles.

She’s not a child anymore. Not scared and alone.

She’s a woman grown, and with a child of her own.

There, snuggled in a sling against Holly’s chest, Gabby sleeps. Her eyes are Holly’s eyes and her nose is Holly’s nose and there’s nothing–absolutely nothing–that Gail wouldn’t do for this little girl. For the woman whose ring matches the one on her own hand.

It’s going to be alright, this family vacation on the island that haunted her childhood.

They’re going to rewrite old memories, build new ones, build new traditions for their little family.

~ * ~

The cabin is dusty–it hasn’t been used since last summer at least.

But a nap for Gabby and a couple hours of cleaning while she sleeps leaves the place looking clean and hospitable.

“Hey,” Holly says, coming out of the spare room that Gail used to call her own, “look what I found–are these yours?”

A stack of books, old and worn, covers threadbare in places and pages dogeared.

She’d forgotten about them, the books. But in a single moment, that one day, that happy precious memory, comes flooding back.

“Have you ever read them?” she asks her wife, and Holly shakes her head, coming to sit down on the couch next to Gail and the baby.

It’s dark outside, night falling quickly, and Gabby’s mouth works eagerly at the nipple of her bottle, warm milk foaming around the corners of her mouth as she drinks.

“Tell you what, you pop a pizza into the oven and I’ll tell you all about it while we eat. And maybe we can even have a little storytime after–what do you think, Gabs? Skip _Goodnight Moon_ tonight? Have a story about a smart little girl detective instead?”

Holly laughs and kisses her shoulder, and Gail smiles over at her.

This, this is what she’d always wanted.

Just a quiet night, the people she loves.

Later, after Gabby’s been put down for the night and while Holly’s in the shower, she’ll stand out on the back porch and look across the lake, to the big cabin with the beautiful library the she knows is over there.

Maybe tomorrow they’ll take a walk. A _thank you_ is long overdue.


	22. It’s Not Heavy (I’m Stronger than I Look)

****It's the first day of classes and you're already pissed. Your one elective has been cancelled due to lack of interest and the final requirement for your minor in social work has been over-booked, and you'd quite literally had to threaten a sophomore with serious bodily harm when he tried to snipe the last seat in the back row away from you.

And now, this.

A stupid chemistry class because it was the only open course without any prerequisites at the same time as the grad-level Modern French Literature class you'd been looking forward to all through Winter break.

 _One more semester of this bullshit and you can be done_ , you think to yourself. Graduate, and fulfill your mother's dream of her daughter becoming the fastest-rising rookie in the history of the Toronto PD. Or, at the very least, not publicly embarrass the family name any more than you have to.

~ * ~

The class is taught by some grad-student. A woman, probably not much older than you, with glasses that are always sliding down her nose and the kind of brightness in her eyes that tells you she lives for this kind of stuff--reactions, formulas, the security of believing in something as seemingly solid as the rules that govern the physical world of atoms, their protons and neutrons and electrons.

But at least she doesn't drone on like the ancient wrinkled man who teaches your criminal procedure class, or read aloud from the textbook--word for word--like the professor in your Developmental Psychology course.

And at least there won't be any group projects, either. No forced socialization with your classmates--a collection of freshmen getting a jump on their core requirements and upperclass students--like you--who put them off until it was almost too late.

It's a pain in the ass, lectures on chemical elements you couldn't care less about three times a week, but it could be worse, you figure. It could be so much worse.

~ * ~

You see her at a bar one night, just after mid-terms. Dancing with a group of friends, a glass of something colorful and fruity in her hand. And it's not as jarring as you would have thought.

But, for the first time, you see her as more than the nerdy TA whose voice gets higher and whose words get faster as she excitedly demonstrates some chemical reaction for you all at the lab table in the front of the room.

She's laughing and smiling and moving with the music, hips rolling along as the song dips and curves its melody through the busy, crowded bar.

It occurs to you then, in a way that it never has before, not with any of your professors, that she has a life outside the classroom. That she has people she cares about and things she likes to do.

(One of which appears to be dancing terribly in public.)

For a minute, you think about going up to her, saying hello.

The thought is foreign enough that you dismiss it immediately. Gail Peck goes to bars to drink, to forget the week. Not to talk with anyone, much less a professor.

Still, though, you wonder.

If you had gone up to her, bought her a drink--would she have recognized you? Would she have blushed, embarrassed to be caught grinding up against another woman, skin flush and eyes glassy from the smoke of cigarette and the alcohol and something else that you're not quite ready to name.

Would she have averted her eyes every class after, stumbled over your name every time you walked through the door, blushed as you walked up to the lab table to hand your exam in?

You wonder and wonder and wonder.

~ * ~

Somehow, you survive the semester. And graduation is just beyond the mountain of exams and final papers that have clogged up your planner.

You're exhausted from the late nights of studying and writing and cramming.

But it's your final chemistry class before the exam--a review session--and the prof promised you all a fantastic show if at least half the students showed up to go over the study-guide.

You're the first one here, it seems, and you take a moment to sit down in the empty hallway outside the classroom and close your eyes. Just for a minute.

It's a nudge against your foot that pulls you out of your daze, and you look up to find her staring down at you, carefully balancing a box on her hip as she struggles to maneuver her keys out of her pocket.

"Um," you start and stand, "can I help with something, Professor Stewart?"

You almost don't recognize your own voice, full of all sorts of emotions and thoughts, things you don't quite have names for.

But she's already pulled out her keys, and has started to unlock the door.

"No, I think I'm good," she tells you with a smile--the same smile you saw that night in the club, a smile you've never seen from her in class, and it makes something in you twist and turn. "And it's Holly."

Inside the classroom, she puts the box down on the table, and starts to unpack it.

"You know, we should grab a drink sometime--after, of course," she says, nodding toward the whiteboard behind her.

And then she winks at you, and you realize there's a whole lot about chemistry that you don't quite understand yet.

But you have a feeling ... Professor Stewart--no, Holly--will be as good a teacher outside the classroom as in.


	23. I'll Wait

They’ve been married just over six months now, but still, Holly feels her heart skip a beat everytime she hears her wife’s voice answer the phone.

_{ Detective Stewart, whatcha got? }_

_~ * ~_

She hadn’t asked Gail to take her name. She hadn’t even thought of it. But the day after their return from France, Gail had pulled out the paperwork–already all filled out–and asked if she wanted to run an errand. 

A small fee, a notary, and it was done. 

They were Mrs and Mrs Stewart. 

And Holly realized that loving someone wasn’t a destination, but a journey. One with no end in sight. How her heart would only get bigger and bigger, every day discovering new reasons to love the woman who wore her ring. 

~ * ~ 

“Hey, Detective Gorgeous,” Holly says, smiling to herself as she pictures Gail at her desk, feet propped up in those sexy black boots, those dark jeans that hugged and clung to every curve. 

She can hear her wife snort through the line.

_{ What’s up, Doc? }_

Gail laughs at her own joke as Holly rolls her eyes. It’s not the first time she’s heard it, and lord knows it won’t be the last.

“Do you think you could catch a ride home with someone tonight?” Holly asks, “I know we were supposed to pick up my car from the dealer but there was an officer-involved shooting with the 22nd and they want the scene and body handled by a crew not associated with that division.”

In the background, paper rustles and there’s a muffled angry shout. 

“Babe, do you need to go?” she says, well familiar with the intricacies and spontaneity of Gail’s job. 

But Gail just chuckles. 

_{ “Nah, just Gerald losing control of his suspect. Such a noob. And don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine. Be safe, babe.” }_

“Always,” she tells her wife. “Love you.”

And then Gail is gone, probably off to help Duncan wrangle whatever riff-raff he’d brought in, and Holly readies herself to head across the city, to go out to the scene. To piece together the details of what had happened earlier that afternoon. 

~ * ~

It has been a long, long day by the time Holly finally leaves the autopsy bay. She spent hours with her team in the alley where an officer from the 22nd shot a fleeing suspect, working under the floodlights to document every inch of the scene for her report. And then, after all but Rodney have gone home, a complete and thorough autopsy. 

But now it’s over. 

There’s nothing to do but type up her notes for the preliminary report; the lab results won’t be in for a couple of days, and some will take even longer. A half-hour, an hour, tops, and she’ll be on her way home. 

But when she opens the door to her office, she finds that home has come to her. 

There’s a half-eaten pizza on top of the minifridge beside her desk, and inside is probably the rest of the six pack of her favorite beer that the two bottles on the floor came from. 

And there, sprawled across the old couch tucked along the far wall, is her sleeping wife, mouth wide open and drooling. There’s a thick novel open and resting on her chest, like she fell asleep reading. 

This is a side of Gail that only Holly gets to see, rare and vulnerable and sweet. 

This, Holly knows, this is love. That feeling inside her when she opened the door, saw the flash of blonde there. Like the red-hot flush of coming inside after long hours clearing away a snowfall. Like her heart, growing just a little bit larger.

 “Hey,” Holly says softly, coming to sit on the floor next to her wife’s head, combing her fingers through Gail’s short hair, “honey, wake up.”

Those beautiful blue eyes open slowly, blinking against the light.

“What are you doing here, love,” Holly asks, “I thought you went home.”

But Gail smiles, warm and sleepy, and shifts onto her side, brings a hand up to cup her wife’s jaw. 

“Nah,” she says quietly, “I decided to wait for you.”

Holly just sits, just looks at her in silence. Like she’s taking a moment to commit this scene to memory, to erase the long, hard day that came before it. 

And then she’s ready. To let the day come to its end. To take her wife home and curl up next to her in bed.

“Okay, hot stuff,” Holly whispers, kissing Gail’s warm forehead, “let’s go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> From [this list](http://onetownthatwontletyoudown.tumblr.com/post/123576610587/one-hundred-ways-to-say-i-love-you).


End file.
